"Support Your Local Sheriff" director Burt Kennedy's contemporary, good ole boy, western comedy "The Rounders" chronicles the misadventures of two, short-sighted, hard-luck wranglers, Ben Jones (Glenn Ford of "The Sheepman") and Howdy Lewis (Henry Fonda of "Welcome to Hard Times") as they struggle to keep from repeating the same mistakes year in and year out when trying to get ahead in their lives. Basically, when these two affable fellows aren't competing in a rodeo, they wind up working for their obnoxious, penny-pinching boss, Jim Ed Love (Chill Wills of "The Alamo"), who does his best to keep them on poverty wages. You have no idea how badly inflation has afflicted America, until to hear the absurd peanuts our two protagonists work for. Of course, everything here amounts to good natured horseplay. The closest thing to drama occurs when another cowboy, Harley Williams (Warren Oates of "Major Dundee") shoots at stray horses to slow them down so he can lasso them. Primarily, Ben and Howdy tangle with a horse that is every bit as elusive as they are. This steed runs circles around poor Ben and drives him so crazy that he tries to give him away to Vince Moore (Edgar Buchanan of "The Comancheros") in exchange for demijohns of whiskey. When this fails, they try to pass him off to another bull rider, Bull (Denver Pyle of "Bonnie & Clyde"), but that old nag runs circles around him. Vince is especially upset because the horse munches on his bags of grain for his liquor production. Things liven up when our heroes find a couple of dames on the side of the road with a car that is out of commission. These gals wind up losing their clothes and our heroes fetch them some waitress aprons so they can appear in public without being arrested for indecent exposure. In one of the funniest gags, the girls stroll through a crowd while Ben and Howdy cover the girls' naked buttocks with their cowboy hats. "Return of the Seven" lenser Paul C. Vogel captures all this horseplay with his widescreen cinematography that is far better than this western deserves. Naturally, Kennedy serves up some savory dialogue.
Review of The Rounders
