Evil Roy Slade (1972) 97 min
Remembered with affection by many people who first saw it as a TV Movie, this Comedy-Western now seems like a warmup to BLAZING SADDLES which followed two years later. It still holds up because its silly humor is a breath of fresh air among contemporary comedies. The jokes are non-stop from beginning to end, which is ample reason to watch any comedy, but it's John Astin's performance as the title character that has secured EVIL ROY SLADE a place in many viewers' hearts. Moustachioed, clad entirely in black, and using his eyes to convey awkward confusion or manic glee, Astin is hilarious from the first moment we see him broadcasting an infectious guffaw while firing off rounds from his gun (it's the most good-natured evil laugh you've ever heard). He also manages the uncommon feat of remaining the same - i.e. two-dimensional - throughout the entire story. Characters as cartoonish as this do not require 'arcs' (in fact I would argue that few characters in any comedy require arcs, as evidenced by the success of the sitcom SEINFELD, which advocated the credo "No hugs, no learning"). Slade is refreshingly uncomplicated and doesn't progress much from a mean, greedy, devil-may-care bully with a chip on his shoulder (he was orphaned as a baby and had only buzzards for friends): his only purpose in the story is to provide a dependably transparent character whose behavior is predictable in every new setup he's thrown into.
The story is split into three acts - or three half-hour shows, since the idea for this character was originally conceived to feature him in a series - which first sees Slade robbing banks owned by a railway magnate (Mickey Rooney), secondly finds him being reformed and civilized by a local girl (Pamela Austin, who, like Astin, had already appeared in a number of Western TV shows), and thirdly returns Slade to the wild. It's a standard formula: establish a character who is an outsider and then get laughs by bringing them into the normal world to show them up as a fish out of water. Every scene is a setup for gags - Slade's dialogue is mostly agitated responses to lines that other characters feed him - which as written on the page aren't nearly as amusing as seeing Astin's delivery of them. To prevent the third act from merely repeating the first, the baton of lunacy is passed to equally cartoonish, two-dimensional Marshal Bing Bell, as played by Dick Shawn. Shawn, who was arguably the funniest thing in IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD and THE PRODUCERS, is relatively restrained here but, along with Dom DeLuise, comes the closest in the cast to matching Astin for laughs (coincidentally, Rooney, who had also starred in MAD WORLD, played a character named Ding Bell). The only sad note about SLADE is that newer audiences unfamiliar with Astin (or the television era of his heyday) may find it unsophisticated and childish. You don't have to be ten years old to enjoy it in the 21st Century...but it would probably help.
sburridge@hotmail.com
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