Judge Reinhold is Earnest Albright, a mild-manner optometrist by day, a man who daydreams of the Wild West on weekends when he travels to New Jersey to take gun-fighting lessons.
Before long, he’s heading West with smitten former co-worker Lucy Laughton on his trail. Only when he gets to Tombstone, he finds he’s been swindled. The store in the center of town he thought he purchased for a new optometrist shop winds up being a rundown shack not exactly centrally located. No that too many people out West are interested in wearing glasses anyway.
And that certainly includes Albright’s hero, the famous Wyatt Earp. First, Albright runs afoul of Earp by standing up to a member of the Doom gang, a no-account group made up of 10 brothers who rob freely outside town limits while Earp does nothing about it.
Albright soon finds out why. Wyatt has vision problems. And he’s not about to don sissy glasses to fix them. Instead, he’d rather leave town, leaving Albright to cope with the situation when the Doom gang descend on Tombstone, determined to free their brother from jail.
Review:
So-so comedy Western. Patricia Clarkson provides a much-needed spark as Lucy, a woman forever trying to win Albright’s attention and affection. The film might play better if the members of the Doom gang weren’t such buffoons.
The more memorable scenes include Earnest’s training with a six-gun at a chicken farm. Let’s just say he manages to hit more chickens than targets. Then there’s Lucy’s recruitment to work in a saloon after a fuss with Earnest. She spins quite the yarn of hardship to get the approval of the other working gals.
Turns out Earnest is a wonder-kid with a gun. But only if he assumes a preposterous six-gun stance that would get him laughed out of Tombstone or any other violent town in the West.
Directed by:
Piers Haggard
Cast:
Judge Reinhold … Earnest Albright
Patricia Clarkson … Lucy Laughton
Fred Ward … Wyatt Earp
Shane McCabe … Doc Wilson
Dennis Burkley … Luke Doom
Neal Thomas … Leroy Doom
Ben Getzwiller … Len Doom
Mildred Brion … Mrs. Whitney
Runtime: 93 min.
Memorable lines:
Lucy Laughton: “I daydream, too. My favorite is prowling the seas as a pirate. Sometimes, when I’m showing jewelry to a fussy old crab of a customer, I think what fun it would be to hoist her from a mast or slice off her head.”
Earnest Albright: “Imagine that.”
Earnest Albright: “I wasn’t trying to be a hero, sir.”
Wyatt Earp: “Next time, try even harder.”
Wyatt Earp: “Every one of those damn bullets was meant for you.”
Earnest Albright: “To hit me?”
Wyatt: “To kill ya.”
Earnest: “Why am I still here?”
Wyatt: “How do you hit someone who keeps splitting in two?”
Earnest: “Fast on the draw, but blind as a bat.”
Wyatt Earp: “You listen. And you listen good. Any minute a pack of cold-blooded murderin’ outlaws who eat the likes of you for breakfast is gonna come up that street. And when they do, they’re not goin’ to find Wyatt Earp waitin’ for them wearin’ a pair of sissy glasses.”
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