Mystery Science Theater 3000: GUNSLINGER

June 22, 2016 3:56 PM - Season 5, Episode 11

"Hired to kill the woman he loved!" A woman's husband is shot and, through line of succession, she is hired as the new sheriff. When she tells a local whorehouse to close at night, its proprietor hires a gunman to kill her. But he falls in love with her! How will this wacky situation end? In blood, natch. Corman alert! He uses one of his main actresses, Beverly Garland, who we saw in 503 SWAMP DIAMONDS, to lead this one. Daddy-O tells us this was his last Western. A couple of weird continuity issues are the subject of much mockery from Joel and the bots, especially in one of the later host segments. Speaking of whom, we approach the end of the Joel Hodgson era--the next episode is his last. YouTube (1h32m) Premiered October 9, 1993.

Episode 511 GUNSLINGER
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Movie
Daddy-O's Drive-In Dirt - Wikipedia - Rotten Tomatoes (8% Fresh)
IMDB (1956, 3.0 stars)
"After her husband is gunned down, Rose Hood takes his place temporarily as marshal of a small Western town."
Directed by Roger Corman. Written by Charles B. Griffith and Mark Hanna. Starring John Ireland, Beverly Garland and Allison Hayes.

posted by JHarris (7 comments total)

Every week, some of us in MST3K Club get together and watch that week's episode online in a chat room together! You should come with!

This week the viewing is in the usual place, the MeFi MST3K room at cytu.be, and at the usual time, which is 9 PM US Eastern/6 PM US Pacific time on Thursday. More information can be found in the updated Club FAQ.
posted by JHarris at 4:51 PM on June 22, 2016

This is one of my favorite episodes of all time. The hallway room! Plus it's not even a terrible movie, really. Not an egregious one, anyway.
posted by Scattercat at 12:27 AM on June 23, 2016

I think I agree Scattercat, it's not one of Corman's worst definitely, and it's an interesting subversion of Western tropes.
posted by JHarris at 9:58 AM on June 23, 2016

(Although it should be noted that not only did the movie have a shooting schedule of seven days, Roger Corman has lamented that it was his only movie that exceeded its shooting schedule, due to bad weather during filming. That's right: it was originally intended to be shot in six days.)
posted by JHarris at 9:59 AM on June 23, 2016

It's downright impressive, honestly. If I made a movie in seven days, it wouldn't be this good. I mean, I'm also not currently a professional filmmaker, but still.
posted by Scattercat at 6:21 PM on June 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Flip side, this means that next week is Mitchell!, and Mitchell! is pretty amazingly bad but manages to somehow fail upward and become endearing. To film your putative action hero losing a battle of wits with an eight-year-old and somehow either not notice or not care...
posted by Scattercat at 6:24 PM on June 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

So, let's see if I understand what's going on in the movie correctly:

She's the Sheriff?
posted by ckape at 9:03 PM on March 15, 2017 [1 favorite]