Watch Waterhole #3 For Free

The Worst Film Ever

Just perfect...

Great Film overall

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

If you ever want to see a film that has hilarity throughout the entire film, then you've got to see this one. "Waterhole # 3" is one of the best western comedies ever made as it has nearly all the classic clichés written into it. It is the Code of the West which makes this film flow from beginning to end. It says, do onto others, before they do it onto you. When the producers selected the actors for this film, they struck gold. Herein we have handsome, broad smiling and ever so crafty James Coburn as Lewton Cole. He's a gambler who learns of a shipment of Gold hidden somewhere near a watering hole and all he has to do is outwit, the outlaws who have it, the Army who wants it back and the lawmen who get in his way. Carroll O'Connor plays Sheriff John H. Copperud, a law officer who believes when it comes to rape, 'a man picks his fruit from the nearest tree.' Claude Akins is MSgt. Henry J. Foggers, who trades his career for a chance to be rich. Bruce Dern plays Deputy Samuel P. Tippen. James Whitmore plays 30 year Capt. Shipley and Roy Jenson is superb as dangerous Doc Quinlen. ****

Generally, I don't like it when these comments about movies degenerate to political diatribes, but with the reaction to this movie, I must respond. What the PC crowd doesn't understand about "Waterhole Number 3" is that in it Coburn played an amoral anti-hero who harbored a great degree of cynicism about hypocritical conventions. Therefore, the "horrible rape sequence" that has their panties in such a twist was merely part of his interpretation of how such a man would behave in a lawless environment. It would have been completely out of character for him to suffer an attack of scruples when confronted with a sexy gal alone in a barn. Besides, in the nineteenth century, feminism didn't even exist and women WERE men's playthings, whether Gloria Steinem can handle the concept or not. For them, to be kept barefoot and pregnant was reality, not an archaic state of being ridiculed by glorified lesbians whose primary goal in life is to control their "reproductive rights." Back in them days, folks, pioneer women had up to two dozen kids and lost a good many of the brood to disease, accidents, and murder. The feminine role was well-defined and there was no discussion about it. In point of fact, the "gentle rape" committed by Coburn upon the nubile young woman's tender virginity might not have been considered rape at all simply because he married her afterward. Some other disturbing facts of the era: Gays were not tolerated, let alone allowed to marry, but pistol-whipped merely for thinking their perverted thoughts. Indians, both good and bad, were driven nearly to extinction for daring to believe they had innate rights on the land. Many of the women of today would have been working in whorehouses, not telling the rest of us what constitutes modern standards of morality, either that, or they would have been slapped silly and sent slinking into the corner to mull over the reality of the day. To sit in front of your computer and actually attempt to apply PC hypocrisy to such a wild and lawless era is so absurd that it beyond comprehension. Furthermore,in the sixties (when this movie was made), a woman couldn't go up to a man's room at 2am, have consensual sex, and the next day claim she was raped, like that broad did to Mike Tyson. Such inherently suspicious bs would have been laughed right out of court. There was no such thing as "date rape," "spouse rape," or "sexual harassment." If a man caught his wife in the sack with another man, he could shoot them both and get off with a temporary insanity plea or not even be charged at all. Neurotic Generation X, with their condoms, Ipods, cell phones, piercings, tats, shaved pubic areas, and shallow, money-grubbing ways weren't even born yet, hence interesting flicks like this one could actually be made and distributed. As for the much ballyhooed rape, something very similar happened in "High Plains Drifter" and who complained then? It's a movie, folks. If you can't separate fact from fiction, perhaps you'd better turn off the set and get a life. Not one of you mentioned the gunfight sequence at the beginning of the movie, which set the tone for this film and should have sent you scurrying to turn if off. Challenged by some jerk to a gunfight, Coburn steps out the door of the saloon, casually approaches his mount, pulls out his saddle gun, rests it atop his saddle, and unceremoniously drops the dope who is standing in the middle of the street, stupidly believing that such differences of opinion were supposed to be resolved in a certain way. Coburn thumbs his nose at authority, convention, tradition, and all the rest of the hypocritical nonsense to which our woefully misguided country is devoted to today. Now, it's as if the sixties never even happened. We've got the Bible-thumping, hymn-singing, pew-sitting hypocrites on the one hand, constantly extolling the spectre of their children's tender psyches as an excuse for their own intellectual, spiritual, and moral cowardice, and the man-hating, feminist "global warming" advocates on the other hand. Both groups shouldn't be allowed to watch good movies like this. Their extremely fragile belief systems can't take it.

The plot in Waterhole #3 seems lifted straight from one of Leone's Spaghetti Westerns - a group of people search for stolen Army gold. Finding the gold doesn't prove to be too difficult. But hanging onto it certainly does.Other than one major flaw, Waterhole #3 is a reasonably entertaining comedy/Western that's sometimes very funny and sometimes...well...a Western. While the story may not be very originally, most of the cast does does an excellent job. James Coburn and Carroll O'Connor work well together. I've become quite the fan of Coburn and in Waterhole #3, he doesn't disappoint. Although he appears to basically be playing himself, he's entertaining enough to watch. In contrast, O'Connor has never been a favorite of mine, but his "bad" sheriff routine really works.The one major flaw I mentioned, however, kept me from completely enjoying Waterhole #3 and giving it a better rating. The flaw concerns the treatment of the sheriff's daughter who is basically raped by Coburn. I'm no prude, but there's just no place for this in a light-hearted comedy. And the fact that the her father, the sheriff, does nothing about it and even makes jokes with Coburn over what happened is out of place and out of line. A little sexual innuendo, a peck on the cheek, or Coburn making a pass at the daughter might have worked much better, but rape takes it way too far.

This is one of my two favorite westerns. Years ago, I bought the soundtrack album, with narration by Roger Miller. It is one of the first things that Dave Grusin, fresh from Colorado U. did. Many of the verses in the ballad are unforgettable, and help me to recreate the best movie scenes in my mind.Lewton Cole is the prototypical Anti-Hero. (Whenever somebody uses that term, I think of Lewton.) "This tale has a hero, his name...Lewton Cole They say he was born with an ace in the hole! They nursed him on bourbon, they teethed him on steel, And his first words were "shut up and deal!"Everyone gets het up about the rape, but ultimately, Billee gets over it. Roger says "Billee decided that she'd already lost everything she was going to, so she decided to go after her man."And the last verse of the ballad, sums up the anti-hero riding off into the sunset."Old Mexico lies just ahead, so Gambler, move along! They ain't nobody there to care if you done right or wrong. You shot a thief, you found some gold, You stole a kiss or two... And the world's a better place because of you."