NAKED GUN

 

This is not THE NAKED GUN, it's just plain NAKED GUN, a 1956 low-budget Western that has a cast that will get the interest of classic sci-fi movie fans. 

If anything, NAKED GUN has too many characters and subplots for its 69 minute running time. There's a drunken piano player who introduces the film, a town boss (Barton MacLane, playing a variation of one of his many gangster characters), his hot-tempered bodyguard (cult legend Timothy Carey), a hanging judge, a disreputable gambler and his tough-as-nails wife (Veda Ann Borg), the Sheriff (Morris Ankrum, billed as "Morrie") and his niece (Mara Corday), and the actual leading man of the film, Willard Parker as insurance agent Breen Mathews. 

Breen Mathews has taken a vow to protect the treasure of the Salazars, an old Mexican family. While traveling to San Francisco to search for the last Salazar heir, Mathews stops in the town of Topaz, and he gets involved in the sundry doings of its inhabitants. 

One expects the Salazar treasure to be the main plot point, but the story veers off into dealing with one of the town judge's many executions, and how those who helped set up the wrongly accused are being killed off (I correctly guessed whodunit). The Salazar treasure winds up getting stolen, but even after that Mathews seems to fade into the background compared to all of the other goings-on. 

A lot of that may have to do with Willard Parker, a B movie veteran who wasn't the most dynamic actor in the world. A romance develops between Parker and Mara Corday's character, which feels forced, because Parker looks like he could be Corday's father. (Parker was 44 when this movie was made, and he looks older.) Parker would later star in the British science-fiction feature THE EARTH DIES SCREAMING, directed by Terence Fisher. 

The main sci-fi connections here are of course Mara Corday and Morris Ankrum, who were major stars of several fantastic films of the 1950s. Fans of the gorgeous Corday will be disappointed--she doesn't get much to do. Throughout the story there's talk of her character singing at the town saloon, so one expects a scene of her performing while wearing a dance hall girl outfit--but it never happens. A catfight does start between Corday and Veda Ann Borg, but Willard Parker almost immediately stops it. There's a literal last-minute revelation about Corday's character which boosts her importance, but it comes way too late. 

NAKED GUN was produced and co-written by low-budget maven Ron Ormond, and it feels more like a talky hour-long episode of a TV series than a feature film. Even the title is a misnomer--much of the brief violence is perpetrated by a knife rather than a pistol. The main reason I watched NAKED GUN was due to Mara Corday and Morris Ankrum, but even their worst sci-fi outings were more fun to view than this.