Fairplay (1971) Poster

(1971)

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2/10
Painful
BandSAboutMovies19 November 2023
Warning: Spoilers
Teddy (Phillip Alford) is in Fairplay looking for his uncle F. O. McGill (Paul Ford) who told him he owned a spa. He really owns a saloon and is in the middle of a battle to keep it.

Directed by James A. Sullivan, who edited Manos: The Hands of Fate and directed Night Fright, and written by Garry Carr and Wallace Clyce, who also wrote another young guy in over his head movie, this time with gangsters, called The Pickle Goes In the Middle, this movie is a comedy in the West that takes place in one room and doesn't have one laugh. It's painful but we must watch movies that we don't like to understand the films that we love. There are no peaks without valleys, no joy without pain.

Barbara Hancock, who plays Pearlie Purvis, is in The Night God Screamed and went into craft service after this movie. Richard Webb, who is the preacher, was once Captain Midnight. And Bill McGhee, who plays Jefferson Washington, was Sam in Don't Look In the Basement. I feel badly for every single one of them for being in this movie. I will not remember you for this. I will remember you for the other movies you were in.
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1/10
Amateurish mishmash
Alberto-77 April 2005
This has got to be one of the worst films I have ever seen. It is a (bad) cross between a Western, a Comedy and a home movie. You can only wonder what a fine character actor like Paul Ford is doing here. I guess he desperately needed the money(he seems very uncomfortable delivering his lines). Supporting actors are dreadful, music is bad, haphazard direction and there is very little story to speak of(most of it very confusing and certainly not funny at all). There are large stretches where most of the action takes place in one room. This is supposed to be a western, how about a few more outdoor scenes? From the opening scenes where the young man arrives at the train station and tries to get a ride into town to visit his uncle(Paul Ford) straight through to all the stupid intrigue about a dead mysterious stranger, you will feel that you are stuck in some kind of horrible unfunny sitcom stretched to feature length. BTW, the title Fair Play is the name of the town where the action takes place (in case you were wondering). I bought this on a two sided double feature DVD(with Sam Peckinpah's terrific The Deadly Companions)for $2.99. If it were not for the Deadly Companions I would say that I got ripped off.

Avoid this one like the plague.
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Indeed awful
Ripshin21 May 2005
This low-budget piece of garbage is badly acted, directed and filmed. Once I checked out the "director's" credits, the reason became clear. The few projects he has been involved in are complete junk....he even had a production role in "Manos, the Hands of Fate," considered one of the worst films of all time.

This "Western" actually begins with the singing of a complete church hymn, performed by the worst group of overacting hacks I've ever seen. (Check out "Places in the Heart" for an excellent example of how to effectively incorporate the inclusion of a sung hymn.....ironically, both were shot in the Dallas area.) Avoid this time-killer. I happened to see it on a DVD, "Wacky Western Comedy," which included "Terror of Tiny Town" and a compilation of "Dusty's Trail" episodes. "Tiny" kinda made the rental worthwhile.
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1/10
Fairplaying reviews by tossing this in the compost heap.
mark.waltz8 February 2023
Warning: Spoilers
When lines said by the fabulous Paul Ford aren't even funny, you know that the issue is in the script. This is probably in the top 10 worst films of the seventies, and that includes bad science fiction and horror as well. This is supposed to be a comedy western, and outside of a groaning opening in a very imperious Church service, I didn't even smirk once. When Ford does appear, it is very clear that he is just in this for the quick paycheck because it's obvious that he sees that there is no story, and half an hour in, the film truly proves that it is way beneath the scale of mediocre and just absolutely pointless. His character is awaiting his nephew, and really nothing else happens except a bunch of unfunny racial references that aren't even worth a grown to be offended by. Nothing blazing about these empty saddles.
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