Bad Company **** (1972, Jeff Bridges, Barry Brown, Jim Davis, David Huddleston, John Savage, Jerry Houser, Geoffrey Lewis, Ed Lauter) – Classic Movie Review 4,160

The 22-year-old Jeff Bridges turns in a magnetic performance as Jake Rumsey, seeking his fortune and freedom on the American frontier, in debut director Robert Benton’s 1972 revisionist Western film Bad Company.

The 1972 American film Bad Company is a bona fide revisionist Western remythologising the American West and a highly propitious debut as director for Robert Benton, who also co-writes with David Newman. The duo had written Bonnie and Clyde (1967), which made them hot in Hollywood. 

The young, just 22-year-old Jeff Bridges turns in a particularly magnetic performance as Jake Rumsey, an amoral but god-fearing Ohio hick dodging the American Civil War draft, who arrives in Jefferson City, Missouri, where he teams up with drifter Drew Dixon (Barry Brown) and a group of runaways to rob banks.

Co-writer/ director Robert Benton’s whimsical and ironic 1972 tale of life in the old West where life is so hard that people have to turn to crime to survive is an essential Western. Whimsical and ironic Bad Company may be, but it is still plenty violent and cynical, too, in the manner of early Seventies movies.

As screen-writer, Benton (along with co-writer David Newman) turns his sharp, revitalising eye on the Western as he had done earlier on the gangster movie in the much more popular and famous Bonnie and Clyde, and did later with the private eye thriller on The Late Show. David Newman and Robert Benton had previously written the 1970 Western There Was a Crooked Man…

Gordon Willis’s lyrical cinematography and Harvey Schmidt’s piano music are good company too. And so is the vintage support cast of Jim Davis as the Marshal, David Huddleston as Big Joe, John Savage as Loney, Jerry Houser, Damon Cofer [Damon Douglas], Joshua Hill Lewis, Charles Tyner, Geoffrey Lewis, Ed Lauter, Raymond Guth, Jean Allison, Ned Wertimer, Ted Gehrling, Claudia Bryar, John Boyd, Monika Henried and Todd Martin.

The English rock band Bad Company is said to have named themselves after this film, though its lead singer Paul Rodgers said the name is taken from an illustration in a Victorian book of morals.

Running time: October 20, 1972.

Release date: 93 minutes.

The cast

The cast are Jeff Bridges as Jake Rumsey, Barry Brown as Drew Dixon, Jim Davis as Marshal, David Huddleston as Big Joe, John Savage as Loney, Jerry Houser as Arthur Simms, Damon Cofer [Damon Douglas] as Jim Bob Logan, Joshua Hill Lewis as Boog Bookin, Geoffrey Lewis as Hobbs, Raymond Guth as Jackson, Ed Lauter as Orin, John Quade as Nolan, Jean Allison as Mrs Dixon, Ned Wertimer as Mr Dixon, Charles Tyner as Egg Farmer Ted Gehring as Zeb, Claudia Bryar as Mrs Clum, John Boyd as Prisoner, Monika Henried and Todd Martin.

Barry Brown shot himself dead at his home in Los Angeles on June 27, 1978, aged 27.

Geoffrey Lewis died on April 7 2015, aged 79.

Ed Lauter died on October 16 2013, aged 74.

David Huddleston, best known for The Big Lebowski (1998), Blazing Saddles (1974), Santa Claus: The Movie and The Producers (2005) died on August 2 2016, aged 85.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,160

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert