Really Surprised!

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Just intense enough to provide a much-needed diversion, just lightweight enough to make you forget about it soon after it’s over. It’s not exactly “good,” per se, but it does what it sets out to do in terms of putting us on edge, which makes it … successful?

Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies

Seeing this film's title might bring to mind all those unfunny western spoofs which used to show up once in a while. But here they hit the bull's eye. This film is great fun from beginning to end. It starts with a young Freddie (Betty Grable) being taught how to shoot by her grandfather. She becomes a dead shot. Next she is singing in a saloon a nice melody "Every Time I Meet You". Problem is, she is carrying a gun with the intention of getting even with her boyfriend Blackie (Cesar Romero) who is betraying her. She shoots the wrong person and has to flee the town. She becomes a school teacher and has the most terrible pair of pupils, the Basserman Boys. Those boys are just as terrible as they are funny. There is a final shootout where at a certain point there is no reason for fighting. I always thought Preston Sturges was ahead of his times, but if you want to have fun with a great comedy, the time is perfect now.

The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend is directed by Preston Sturges who also produces and co-writes the screenplay with Earl Felton. It stars Betty Grable, Cesar Romero, Rudy Vallee, Olga San Juan, Porter Hall and Hugh Herbert. Music is by Cyril Mockridge and cinematography by Harry Jackson.When she accidentally shoots a judge in the posterior, sharpshooting dance hall gal Freddie Jones (Grable) escapes the city of Rimpau and ends up in Snake City disguised as a schoolmarm.In his own words, Preston Sturges would call The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend an unfortunate hodgepodge. Who are we to disagree? From the off nothing sat right for the great writer and director as regards the film, already smarting from the financial disaster that was Unfaithfully Yours, Sturges would end up making a film that wasn't a Sturges movie! Unlike Unfaithfully Yours, which at least received favourable critical notices, The Beautiful Blonde from Bashful Bend was savaged by the critics and lost a fortune at the box office. It signalled the death knell for Sturges' career whilst also becoming the first flop of Grable's starring output at this juncture.Would the film have had a better reception were it not attached to Preston Sturges? Well it's possible since lesser expectation levels and less attention to the cost of making it would surely have had people view it purely as a Grable starring piece, but quite simply it's just not a good movie, it's uninspiring on the page to begin with, as Sturges' coarse scripting doesn't sit right in the froth, and then the humour falls decidedly flat once the central premise runs out of ideas. Add in some poorly structured characters, such as the moronic Basserman brothers, and the film irritates instead of bringing joy.Technical attributes do stop it from being an utter waste of time. The Technicolor photography is stunning, the costuming is right out of the top draw, and Grable, who is clearly too good for this sort of stuff, is great value with her effervescence energy and of course those legs! We can also give a modicum of support to the nutty shoot-out that greets the patient amongst us in the finale. Played for scatter shot farce, there is chuckles to be had as Snake City becomes divided and go at it gun for gun. But ultimately these things can't lift the film above the mediocrity that hangs over it during the course of its running time. 5/10

and Betty Grable had "The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend".While it is extremely difficult to dislike anything Betty Grable ever did, this film really cracks that rule. Every star has an embarrassing moment, and so does every director. In that case, here it is Preston Sturges who spoofs westerns with a crudeness that is sometimes nose-wrinkling as you try to figure out why they even thought this had a chance of being considered entertainment. It is obvious that someone was influenced by the Broadway success of "Annie, Get Your Gun!" (just imagine Grable in that role!), but that at least had good taste, an excellent Irving Berlin score, and stars like Merman and Betty Hutton to help vanish away the corn. What this film ranks is simply insulting.An elderly man is seen teaching a five year old girl how to shoot a gun after one of the weakest opening credits songs, certainly the first here (and followed by such gem title songs as the credits of "The First Traveling Saleslady" and "Oh, Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet...") . You get the picture. This isn't Annie Oakley, Calamity Jane, or Molly Brown. This is an ill-tempered spitfire who grabs a gun first, shoots second, and apologizes third. In three of the cases of her temperament, a hissing judge (Porter Hall) ends up on the receiving end of her sharp-shooting. The first sequence has Hall (as a character named Alfalfa) being chastised by his nagging wife Elvira (Margaret Hamilton) for being caught in a lady's boudoir. After shooting the judge in the derrière (twice), Grable escapes to the middle of nowhere, and like Mae West in "My Little Chickadee", ends up teaching school. She deals with two over-aged class bullies (one played by Sterling Holloway) by shooting ink bottles off their heads in order to keep them in line. Her old lover (Cesar Romero) shows up to find her interested in prominent townsperson Rudy Vallee and of course, another rumpus is forthcoming.Grable only sings very briefly in this comedy misfire which takes satire too far and turns the country folk of this town into idiots who begin shoot-outs of their own when Holloway and his twin are believed to be killed. Such familiar character players as Hugh Herbert (as a near-sighted doctor), Al Bridge and the annoying El Brendel turn up, although something tells me they (like the others) wished they had turned it down. Olga San Juan suffers racial slurs as the half Mexican/half Native American companion of Grable's. The only really funny sequence are some gags during the final shoot-out (straight out of a 60's sitcom) and the brief exchange between Hamilton and Hall at the beginning. Fortunately short, this film is an albatross in the career of one of our most delightful musical comedy stars who probably knew better the next time to read the script before she consented to appear in her next projects.

About 55 years ahead of its time and as rude and silly as if it were made today. It does have a very modern feel about it and shows really how staged other 40s films were. Occasionally when loose behavior and honest rudeness was allowed, or got through or whatever, the films looks and sounds like 2006 not 1949. Just like this one. It very funny and like an 80's Zucker Bros western..or as someone else said here, very Coen Bros....anyway, as I was saying, modern, vulgar and silly. Later, in the late 50s similar cartoony western comedies like LI'L ABNER with censorship busting names (eg: Appollonia Von Climax) and characters appeared (Julie Newmar stepping from a rocket clad in almost nothing) and of course all of BLAZING SADDLES in the 70s. We are in that territory, folks.