The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox

Ugh. Double ugh. My co-worker recommended this wretched Western Comedy to me for God knows what reason. It's dreadful. I've never been a particular fan of Old West comedies in the first place. I tend to find them shrill or juvenile for whatever reason, probably because their lawless, male-centric settings provoke the silliest impulses in screenwriters.

But this is far far worse than most. It makes Mel Gibson's Maverick look like freaking Blazing Saddles in comparison. I'm usually a fan of both George Segal and Goldie Hawn, but not even their best efforts can save this limp, tired, aimless misadventure. I couldn't find a still from the movie worthy of posting along with this entry, as a testament to the lack of enthusiasm throughout the Web for this 1976 dud.

Segal plays Charlie Malloy, known as The Dirtwater Fox, a conman who occasionally takes up with a ruthless band of outlaws. He's just helped the outlaws steal $40,000 in cash, before ditching them with the money and taking off on his own. He's just getting on his way when he's conned out of the money himself by a prostitute known as the Bluebird (Goldie Hawn).

We first meet The Bluebird as she's performing an obnoxious, incredibly long burlesque song full of stupid innuendos along the lines of "enjoy a fuzzy peach, but please don't touch my plums." This is the first of three times director Melvin Frank will make Hawn perform this little number, in one of a variety of humiliations he will visit upon her throughout the movie.

As you could probably guess, the Bluebird (who eventually disguises herself as a Duchess in a brief subplot about marrying into a rich Mormon family...don't ask...) and the Dirtwater Fox join forces to spirit the money away from the outlaws who seek to reclaim it, and fall in love along the way. Did I already remember to say "ugh"? I hope so.

Let's get back to Hawn's character. She's meant to be light and bawdy, like so many other Goldie Hawn characters, but it just doesn't come off here. Prostitution's just not the best comic affectation. Hawn in her prime was bubbly and sexy, but also clever and kind of mysterious. She could turn you on in an instant, but also turn on you, as I recall from one really cool scene in the midst of the otherwise forgettable There's a Girl in My Soup. There was always something going on behind her wide grin. But here, her character's simply a sex object, and kind of an annoying, distracting sex object at that. More than once, she reminded me of Kate Capshaw from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and that's never ever a good thing. (Although, I'll once again say for the record, very few people truly appreciate the genius of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. But that's a blog post for another time.)

The joke during all those "Duchess" scenes is how impossible it is for this woman to stop being a sexual object for even five minutes. "Ha ha," we're meant to think, "isn't it ridiculous that this filthy whore is dressed in finery!" It's not funny, really...just, as I said, shrill.

And Segal doesn't fare much better. He's supposed to be, I think, a charming rogue, but as written, the Dirtwater Fox is such a moron, it's hard to sympathize with him. Imagine if Han Solo never said anything clever, treated Chewie like shit, smoked cheap cigars and threw a constant stream of cliched one liners at any piece of ass that passed his way. That's the Dirtwater Fox in a nutshell. Oh, yeah, and there's no Millenium Falcon or Lando Calrissian, either.

The biggest problem with the whole enterprise is that it's not at all funny. None of the jokes work. None. One particularly painful scene finds Hawn (posing as a Duchess) pretending to speak French to the Dirtwater Fox, in front of one of the Mormons. Their French is really English with a series of bad European accents. It goes on FOREVER, and you get the sense about halfway through the scene that Hawn and Segal know the bit isn't working. I'm serious. You can actually see their enthusiasm for the material drain away mid-scene. Farce is hard, no one ever said it wasn't.

I realize I have gone on for a while about how bad this movie is, and not gotten to all the worst stuff. Every single big moment and set-piece in the movie is based around a tired movie cliche. When the characters are tied up, they use glasses to refract sunlight and burn the rope. Whenever the Dirtwater Fox is in a scrape, he whistles for his horse and leaps on to his back. The Fox even cheats at cards by hiding an Ace of Spades up his fucking sleeve. UGH.

Oh, and there's a long and pointless and unfunny scene in which the couple hide from outlaws in a Jewish wedding. Why put this scene in there? It has nothing to do with anything. It's only in there because Melvin Frank must have thought Jews are inherently funny. With that name, I'm thinking he's a Yid himself, and there's nothing inherently anti-Semetic about the scene. It's just random and kind of desperate, which is how the whole movie plays.