Dirty Little Billy (1972)

[cigar joe]

Here's a flick I'd like to see.

[KERMIT]

a hidden gem

[Nobody]

I've been looking for this for quite some time. Some years ago, a Norwegian film magazine made a list of the top 10 westerns. This was included, as well as The Hired Hand, another flick I haven't seen yet. Will probably pick up the SE DVD of the latter.

[Le Bon]

Yes this is a real rarity! I have seen this just once on ITV many years ago and would love to see it again too.

[Nobody]

Just noticed on imdb that this was Nick Nolte's debut, he has an uncredited part as "Town Gang Leader". Sweet.

[HEX]

A FLAWED MASTERPIECE

[cigar joe]

Well I managed to find a copy of this little gem, Dirty Little Billy (1972) Dir Stan Dragoti, Michael J. Pollard, Richard Evens, Lee Purcell, Charles Aidman, Dick Van Patten, Gary Busey, Nick Nolte.

This film shows definite SW influences everything is rough-cut or ramshackle-shabby, everybody is dirty, the street is full of mud. This is a story of the start of Billy The Kid's career.

***SPOILERS***


It starts with a shot of an American flag being raised over an end of track town. We see an approaching steam engine hanging off the running boards and from the cars are men. The train stops and disembarks its passangers. We see The McCarty family Cathrine & stepfather Henry and Billy Bonney McCarty (Michael J. Pollard) walk through the mud to town. Billys not sure that this move  from New York City is a good idea.

In town they meet up with business man Antrim (Charles Aidman) who sells them a farmstead near town. Billy's stepfather works Billy's hands raw and finnally chases him off since he's such a screw-up. Billy at first decides to head back east but changes his mind and ends up in town as a gofer between old business man Antrim's faction and young hot head Goldie, (Richard Evens) a young gambler/saloon/brothel owner who is a recluse never leaving his establishment who with his girfriend/prostitute Berle (Lee Purcell) run Goldie's.

Billys NYC street smarts enable him to skim enough off the relationship to make it wothwhile and eventually he is able to form a quasi partnership with Goldie after helping out in a saloon brawl, even to the extent that Goldie shares Berle with Billy.

Goldie's toughguy reputation rests solely on his New Model Army Colt which he pulls out and empties with out aiming whenever he's threatened, since none of his enemies can aim very well either more noise than damage is usually done. Goldie's barkeep referrs to Billy as "Kid". Billy eventually gets a Colt of his own and he practices aiming and shooting in the saloon, though he still hasn't the nerve to actually shoot anyone.

In the meanwhile Billy's stepfather dies and his mother eventually begins to sleep with Antrim.

As the town becomes more respectable Antrim's faction connives a ruse deal with Goldie to force him & Berle to leave town. Its actually designed to get him out in the open so hired guns can gun him down. Antrim & Billy are in Goldie's when Goldie & Berle leave, Antrim grabs Billy from behind (in defference to Billy's mother) to prevent him from going out in the street as Goldie and Berle are being gunned down. Billy breaks free but not before Berle is killed and Goldie wounded.

Billy and Goldie head for the hills to find Big Jim McDaniel and his gang but the sleazeball outlaws find them, and first demand their money.  Either one or all of McDaniel's gang are pervs and one makes a grab for Billy, who this time pulls out his Colt and one, two, three, shoots them all down and "Billy the Kid" is born.

Goldie & Billy strip the bodies of all valuables even putting on the outlaws clothes over thier own, taking their boots too. One of the last shots is of Billy stuffing three revolvers into his waistband,

The film is enjoyable and worth a look if you can find it.

[Nobody]

Where did you find a copy of this?

[cigar joe]

Nobody, I couldn't get it to play on my JVC XV 525 but it would play on the Sony VAIO, so I watched it on that.

here is the collectors site:

 http://www.bpm123.net

[KERMIT]

boss link joe.  

[cigar joe]

Hooray! The new sony DVD player plays this fine actually got to see it on a bigger screen with the wife tonight, she liked it, and actually asked how come nobody ever heard of it.

Here is a NY Times Review:

Credit the team headed by Stan Dragoti, the television commercials director who is making his movie bow with "Dirty Little Billy," with giving us a realistically raw view of the beginnings of the Billy the Kid legend. Unfortunately, Billy, floundering in a search for roots in sleazy, muddy Coffeyville, Kan., and the vicious or callous unwashed types he's involved with remain largely vague, unresolved figures brawling and killing on a primitive landscape.

Billy, who is portrayed by Michael J. Pollard in smiling, almost witless fashion, revolts against the hard farm life forced on him by his stepfather. Thereafter he's befriended by the town badman, Richard Evans. Lee Purcell, as Evans's prostitute girlfriend, initiates Billy into one aspect of manhood. Eventually, Coffeyville's puritanical element, led by Charles Aidman — who, for unexplained reasons, is dallying with Billy's mother—drives Billy and his pal out of town after gunning down the hapless Miss Purcell.

Our callow hero, once inept with guns, uses them with bloody effect to protect his friend in a final shootout with a gang of thieving renegades. And, one may assume, Billy the Dessperado now emerges full-blown as he happily packs his six-shooters and trudges off into the sunset with his mentor.

The look of an authentic period and place is captured in the dirt, sloppy roads, rickety buildings and tattered itinerants who never owned fancy 10-gallon hats, spurs or chaps. And the unremitting struggle for survival is also starkly spotlighted, especially in a couple of brutal fights staged without glorification of the principals.

"Dirty Little Billy" projects an unvarnished picture of the Old West, even if the contributions of the script and the dour Charles Aidman, the misused Lee Purcell and the rough Richard Evans are unconvincing. And one is inclined to agree with a confused Billy when he asks, "What's all this rushing about for?"

[The Firecracker]

This will be playing through out the month of october on Encore Westerns.

[cigar joe]

Well hope all you that have never seen it can catch it.

[Dust Devil]

I saw bits of this but didn't have the time to sit through the whole thing: seemed decent indeed.