The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday

This is American International Pictures mid 70s drive-in movie idea of Blazing Saddles meets Cat Ballou via Paint Your Wagon. Believe it or not, it is actually funny. Renowned for making budget imitation versions of popular genres or other blockbusters, AIP often just made their own remake of whatever was popular. Bonnie And Clyde? AIP make A Bullet For Pretty Boy or BoxCar Bertha or Bloody Mama, etc. Westworld? AIP make Futureworld. on it went. Until after Superman they made Meteor and went broke. Sad really because AIP had a place in pre Video and DVD Hollywood after Republic Pictures and Allied Artists also went out of the biz. GREAT SCOUT is a Lee Marvin western style 'romp' with an excellent cast. It imitates those initial films above (possibly also The Cheyenne Social Club) and adds some phoney animation (cartoon dots supposed to be a beehive attack) rude Native American Indians played by Oliver Reed (!) and Black Bart style gunslingers. It's all slight and silly. Cross reference the films mentioned and it is all no worse than something Ann Margret and Arnie and Kirk Douglas once made. GREAT SCOUT is a sitter for a cult revival on DVD.