It took me quite a while to watch the commonly-held classic, Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, and by "a while", I mean decades. Why? It was that stupid song. Yep, and the stupid bicycle scene. I'm a western fan, and I was pretty sure that the film was so popular in the mainstream because it was barely western-like in nature. It's a pet peeve of mine, I have to admit; things in a genre that get mainstream attention for all the things that sit well outside of what made the genre great in the first place.
Well, some years ago I watched it, and you know what? It was pretty good. Maybe a bit too fluffy at times, too goofy-buddy (a big thing in 70's westerns), but overall I feel that it's a very credible western...in spite of the accursed bicycle song.
Mrs. Sundance, it must be said, isn't in the same league as that famous film. In any way. But, as a fun TV movie (a 1974 ABC Movie of the Week), mapped out as a sequel of sorts, it was very entertaining and worth watching. It features the classic TV "Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery as Etta Place, the character in the famous bicycle scene (played so charmingly by Katherine Ross, who played her again in the film Wanted: The Sundance Woman), and titular Mrs. Sundance.
Well, some years ago I watched it, and you know what? It was pretty good. Maybe a bit too fluffy at times, too goofy-buddy (a big thing in 70's westerns), but overall I feel that it's a very credible western...in spite of the accursed bicycle song.
Mrs. Sundance, it must be said, isn't in the same league as that famous film. In any way. But, as a fun TV movie (a 1974 ABC Movie of the Week), mapped out as a sequel of sorts, it was very entertaining and worth watching. It features the classic TV "Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery as Etta Place, the character in the famous bicycle scene (played so charmingly by Katherine Ross, who played her again in the film Wanted: The Sundance Woman), and titular Mrs. Sundance.
She has been on the run from the law since the events portrayed in the original film, hiding out in a small-ish cowtown in the guise of the local school teacher. Things had been skaky of late, with various people asking what a nice girl like her was doing in a place like that...a bit of panic sets in. So, when a moving stage production came through, acting out her earlier life with the Sundance kid and the Wild Bunch, she begins to think that it might be time to move on. She goes to that show, and at the theater she sees the lawman that has been on her trail; immediately she dresses up in men's clothes and jumps a train. Feeling like she had just dodged a bullet, another hobo (played by Robert Foxworth) hops into the railcar with her.
The chase is on, and from then on, nothing is what it seems.
I'm a sucker for TV-type movies from the 70's, a sucker for westerns in general, and, it must be confessed, I've had a minor crush on Elizabeth Montgomery since I started to notice girls...a very long time ago. This was great fun for me. Sure, it was a teeny bit cheesy at times, and it did it's best to connect itself with it's superior parent film (you even see the bike from the original film, bent and rusted from unuse), but Montgomery is so serious and interesting, giving it her all, that I tossed my critical eye out the window. Robert Foxworth was good too; humorous and rakish, with a bit of a nebbish quality. Having only seen him as the apostle Peter in the incredible Peter & Paul miniseries (with a fiery Anthony Hopkins), it was nice to add a different angle to my (thus far) favourable impression of his work. It's worht noting that he and Montgomery began a romance during this film, and that they lived together for twenty years before finally marrying; he was he fourth and final husband.
If you watch it, don't expect to compare it with the famous one; it's its own thing, and quite a fun thing when viewed with an eye receptive to fun. It has only a wobbly connection to the actual events or the people involved, but I enjoyed it quite a lot.
The chase is on, and from then on, nothing is what it seems.
I'm a sucker for TV-type movies from the 70's, a sucker for westerns in general, and, it must be confessed, I've had a minor crush on Elizabeth Montgomery since I started to notice girls...a very long time ago. This was great fun for me. Sure, it was a teeny bit cheesy at times, and it did it's best to connect itself with it's superior parent film (you even see the bike from the original film, bent and rusted from unuse), but Montgomery is so serious and interesting, giving it her all, that I tossed my critical eye out the window. Robert Foxworth was good too; humorous and rakish, with a bit of a nebbish quality. Having only seen him as the apostle Peter in the incredible Peter & Paul miniseries (with a fiery Anthony Hopkins), it was nice to add a different angle to my (thus far) favourable impression of his work. It's worht noting that he and Montgomery began a romance during this film, and that they lived together for twenty years before finally marrying; he was he fourth and final husband.
If you watch it, don't expect to compare it with the famous one; it's its own thing, and quite a fun thing when viewed with an eye receptive to fun. It has only a wobbly connection to the actual events or the people involved, but I enjoyed it quite a lot.
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