The Outlaw (Howard Hughes, 1943)
Cast: Jack Buetel, Jane Russell, Thomas Mitchell, Walter Huston, Mimi Aguglia, Joe Sawyer, Gene Rizzi. Screenplay: Jules Furthman. Cinematography: Gregg Toland. Art direction: Perry Ferguson. Film editing: Wallace Grissell. Music: Victor Young.
Any list of great bad movies that doesn't include The Outlaw is not to be trusted. Because it is certainly bad, with a callow performance by Jack Buetel as Billy the Kid, a one-note (sultry pouting) performance by Jane Russell as Rio, and disappointing ones from old pros Thomas Mitchell and Walter Huston. It's ineptly directed by Howard Hughes, with awkward blocking and an abundance of scenes that don't go much of anywhere. It was weakened by Hughes's battles with the censors over Russell's cleavage and over the sexual innuendos -- an inept explanation that Rio and Billy were married while he was in a coma serves to legitimate the fact that they are sleeping together after he revives. It also implies that Billy rapes Rio, but she falls in love with him anyway. It's laden with a gay subtext, suggesting that Pat Garrett and Doc Holliday are in love with Billy -- and with each other. It's full of Western clichés and one of the corniest music tracks ever provided by a major film composer: Victor Young shamelessly borrows a theme from Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6 as a love motif for Rio and Billy, falls back on "Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie" at dramatic moments, and "mickey mouses" a lot of the action, including bassoons and "wah-wah" sounds from the trumpets to punch up comic moments. And yet, it's kind of a great bad movie for all of these reasons, and because it reflects its producer-director's megalomania, resulting in countless stories about his behind-the-scenes manipulation, his hyped-up "talent search" for stars that produced Russell (who became one) and Buetel (who didn't), and most famously, his use of his engineering talents to construct a brassiere for Russell that would perk up her breasts the way he wanted. (Russell apparently found it so uncomfortable that she secretly ditched it and adjusted her own bra to his specifications.)