User Reviews

Though this film has an appealing juvenile star with Robby Benson in his first really substantial role, Jory is definitely not for the family trade. It's a tale about a kid who had to grow up real fast, especially when he starts losing everyone near and dear to him.

Robby and his father Claudio Brook are traveling west, Brook is a ne'er do well lawyer with a drinking problem. He gets killed in a really stupid drunken brawl by a cavalryman. Benson evens the score for him, but of course has to beat it out of town.

Trail boss John Marley takes him on a cattle drive and young cowboy B.J. Thomas who sports a two gun rig and is quite adept at all kinds of fancy twirling, takes Benson under his wing. The rest of the film is about Benson facing all kinds of adverse conditions before he realizes maybe he does have the right stuff to make it in the west.

Country singer B.J. Thomas, known best for singing Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head from Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid has the most interesting role in the film. He's a punk, but a likable one and when he gets killed after ignoring some very good advice, you do think about him the rest of the movie.

Coming of age movies are always interesting and appealing to a certain audience. But this is a very violent film, good but still quite violent. Parents of small kids beware.

"Jory" follows the fortunes of the 15 year old son (named Jory) of a down-on-his-luck drunkard lawyer trying to restart life in the tough western frontier. It begins dramatically with Jory orphaned on the first night after a bar fight because his father played Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on the bar piano with Jory later fighting and killing the drunken killer of his father. Jory is then forced to grow up fast as a cowboy joining a horse drive to Texas and then protecting the rancher's teenage daughter.

What is interesting about this western is that the 15 year old lead happens to be the major screen acting debut of '70's teen idol Robby Benson whose claim to fame was as a blue eyed pretty boy with model quality features, a kind of lankier, more tanned 1970's version of Justin Bieber! Benson later became famous for doe eyed, whispy voiced sensitive roles and you certainly see the beginning of this in Jory and at first glance, Benson seems to be altogether the wrong type of actor for this rugged boy-to-man story but he actually carries it off very well. This is partly because he's the same age as his character and that is rare in modern films where the norm is young looking 20+ year olds acting in mid teen roles, in much the same way Logan Lehman brought similar realism to his role in "3:10 to Yuma", another boy forced to grow up fast Western.

Benson as Jory actually gives this movie a unique flavor for what would ordinarily be just a pretty run of the mill Western of the type so common in the 70's.

Dreary Western tale, cheaply made and given uninspired handling – making it virtually indistinguishable from any of the typical fare being shown on TV in the same vein, a status which would hasten the end of this most popular and long-standing of genres!

The titular character is a 15-year old boy (Robby Benson) who witnesses the death of his drunkard, piano-playing lawyer father (surprisingly played by Luis Bunuel regular Claudio Brook!), kills the man responsible and then joins a cattle drive. Here, he befriends a young fast-draw – getting to learn the tricks of the trade into the bargain – and is paternally looked after by the elderly foreman (John Marley, also an unexpected presence in this type of film but not ineffective); along the way, the young man is brutally shot dead when challenged by a bully in a saloon (Brad Dexter) – with Jory gunning down the latter there and then. Eventually, the company reaches its destination – a ranch which is constantly under threat from a rival cattle baron – and Jory is assigned to protect the boss' teenage daughter; at one point, the two kids are kidnapped and Marley dies attempting to save them…after which Jory leaves to search for his very own "Promised Land".

Pointless in the long run – to say nothing of contrived (with every person whom Jory looks up to getting killed before his very eyes!), the film is essentially a time-waster for genre addicts.

Robby Benson is Jory in a movie about a kid in the West. Yes, he's a fifteen-year-old boy who joins a horse drive after his father Ethan (Claudio Brook) is killed by a drunk who is killed by Jory. What a happy little film!

The young man gets hired by Roy Starr (John Marley), has a bad influence in Jocko (B. J. Thomas), becomes friends with saloon girl Dora (Anne Lockhart) and falls in love with Amy (Linda Purl). Did the get B. J. Thomas in this because he sang "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" in the soundtrack for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? And hey - Howard Hesseman is in this very quickly as a bartender.

Based on the book by Milton R. Bass, this was directed by Jorge Fons, who would go on to make Red Dawn. The 1990 one, not the one you've seen! It was written by Gerald Helman and Robert Irving.

A really good surprise for me to discover this little gem. I am not particularly fond of westerns, but this one reminds me another feature from the nearly same year, and starring Gary Grimes: CULPEPPER'S CATTLE COMPANY, directed by Dick Richards, one of the best real life western ever made. Both describe the "odyssey" of a young man among mature men who will teach him the real life. Poignant stories for these two movies. I don't know the director, even most of the actors too. It's actually a seventies film, and avoids many clichés. I guess Andrew Mac Laglen would have not made such a film. For sure.

Worth watching.

When it comes to "coming of age" films, no actor was better at portraying the misguided, troubled teen than Robby Benson: from his TV films "Death Be Not Proud" (1975) and "The Death of Richie" (1977), to his theatrical films "Ode to Billy Joe" (1976) and "One on One" (1977), Benson always delivers on-screen.

Here, Benson makes his feature film debut -- and as a leading man at the age of fifteen! (not forgetting his pre-stardom bit parts in the 1974 TV films "Remember When," "All the Kind Strangers," and "Virginia Hill") -- in this adaptation of a best-selling 1969 western novel of the same name.

After the murder of his drunkard lawyer of a father at the hands of a drunken Union soldier in a senseless bar brawl, Jory is left fatherless and homeless. Later, upon confronting the drunk soldier, who subsequently attacks Jory, the youth easily -- yet accidentally -- kills him.

Now a fugitive, Jory finds a job -- and home -- as part of a horse-drive; he gains a defacto father in the drive's leader (an excellently-grizzled John Marley, best known for the "horse head" scene in "The Godfather") and brother in the gun-trick slingin' Jocko (a really good, yet one-and-done acting gig by musician BJ Thomas, known for the worldwide hits "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head"; he does theme song, "Jory," here). While his fellow cowhands doubt the meek fifteen year old can meet the demands of the job, Jory "comes of age" and not only proves himself to his fellow cattle-drivin' cowboys, but becomes an affable gunslinger -- and avenges the murder of Jocko.

While "Jory" is certainly a well-shot and edited film, as well as acted (look for a young Anne Lockhart and Linda Purl), amid the flux of westerns of the time, "Jory" failed to find an audience; it proved to be the only English-language feature film from Mexican director Jorge Fons.

"Jory" proves to be a great start of a career, as Robby Benson really shines; more so that he's the same age of his character -- and not some a thirty year old playing a fifteen year old (as did Mark Hamill at the age of 25 playing a 19 year old; Benson auditioned but lost out on the orphaned space jockey role; ironic considering "Star Wars: ANH" (itself a space western) and "Jory" follow the same plotting -- with BJ Thomas's Jocko as an ersatz Han Solo, here).

While you can watch "Jory" both on You Tube and Tubi (the former is the better-quality rip; not as washed-out and blurry), you can also pick up a copy as part of Mill Creek's "The Swinging Seventies" 50-film pack.