'Las Vegas Hillbillies' Review

'Las Vegas Hillbillys' - 1966

Story in Brief: Woody Weatherby's uncle dies and leaves him a casino in Las Vegas. Woody and his buddy/business manager Jeepers drive from Tennessee to Vegas in their barely running truck to discover that the casino is a simple roadside tavern and the fortune they imagined is nothing but debt. All they have is the space, a bartender and singer Boots Malone's contract for the rest of the year. Are Woody's dreams of being a big country singer destined to remain dreams?

Thoughts:

I apologize for making it sound like this movie has much of a story. It doesn't really and I don't think it was intended to be much more than a framework to hang the performances of a number of country stars upon. In that it succeeds. Unfortunately the simple story that we follow for eighty some minutes just stops and this is what frustrates me most. I mean it wasn't much and I had grown to accept that, I was even enjoying it, but then there's nothing at the end to wrap things up. It feels like the producers realized they had enough footage for a feature and just stopped. Plotlines (simple as they were) are left. There's no real buildup to the last minute or so of the movie, no real link between what we've been watching and the ending. That's what bothers me.

That said, the movie's not bad until the frustrating ending. It's amusing in bits, not too badly made most of the time and it's reasonably well acted for the most part. The bits that are bad are really awkward, but they're relatively infrequent. The breaks for the music are a bit too frequent and run too long. The majority of this movie is music. Since that was the intent, I can't fault them there but it does make it a bit tricky to watch now, especially as many of the performers in the film are relatively obscure now.

Ferlin Husky is a likable lead as Woody. He's friendly and well intentioned. When people start to rally around him, it's not hard to understand why. He's good people. Don Bowman is fun as Jeepers. Jeepers is the relatively quiet cynical guy you know who's always willing to let you know where things will go wrong. He makes for a good counter point to Woody. Mamie Van Doren is Boots and she seems to be having a reasonably good time acting with the country folk (and looking cuddly). The big surprise (in more ways than one) in the cast is an appearance from Richard Kiel as a bodyguard. Dressed with a big cowboy hat, he was the reason behind my only vocal laugh while watching the film. While laughing at one of Jeepers' comments, he smacks Jeepers in the back, knocks him down, and quickly apologizes and helps him up. I'm sure it was intentional, but it was so natural it amused me.

The image is full screen. If the opening credit lettering is anything to go by, it's slightly cropped, but not by much. The picture is flecked and damaged, but not horribly so. The picture is crisp except in moments when the photography appears to get too clever and fails. The audio is solid but unremarkable. In short, it's a reasonably good representation of what was no doubt a low budget sixties film. It's not likely to ever look any better.

The only extras VCI has supplied is a loop of films that were 'coming soon' when this DVD was released. Still, considering it's going for $9.99 now, that's not bad.

Not recommended. The non-ending has left me too bitter towards this film. I just can't recommend it. If you have a sizable interest in sixties country music, then look for it. Otherwise there's not enough here for most people.

(Standard 'pricing may have changed' disclaimer. Add 'I'd be more creative but work in Archive has me tuckered out'. Also add 'This is probably the most anyone has ever written about this film'. And I reviewed the sequel as well so add 'Coming soon...')