Johnny Yuma (1966)

Cast

• Mark Damon
• Rosalba Neri

Inventory

• Card cheating
• A saloon brawl
• Two bathtubs
• A stereotypical comic sidekick
• An urchin who never forgets a favor
• A gratuitous swap of a gun belt that leads to confusion
• A branding iron
• A wall safe hidden behind the Stargate ring

Summary

Rosalba Neri plays a scheming wife who sends her husband to an early grave. This should allow her to inherit the ranch, except for the inconvenience of a nephew to whom everything has been bequeathed. Mark Damon is Johnny Yuma, a gunslinger with a George Hamilton tan, a Southern California accent, and a collection of shirts in primary colors. In between him and his fortune is his aunt's slimy brother and a gunfighter who honest enough to stay bought, sort of.

Mark Damon, who had a long career as an actor, had a much longer career as a producer, so he must have learned something along the way. We'll assume that this movie fell into the category of learning from a bad example.

Update

Mark Damon is a lot more impressive than this film would ever lead you to believe. I had done a quick glance at his IMDB page, but I hadn't checked out his producing credits until I discovered that he is the producer for The Ledge. He has been producer or executive producer of the following movies (among many others):  Monster, Bat*21, The Lost Boys, Flight of the Navigator, Short Circuit, 9½ Weeks, Clan of the Cave Bear, The Neverending Story, and Das Boot. While I won't claim that these were all great art, there are some big budget movies in this mix.

Dialogue

"Sorry, but one needs to be careful about who dies, you know. Seems to me you're new around these parts. You just can't imagine how many false cadavers we have around here. We buried at least six Jesse James within a year."

Plot

This movie was directed without any of those fancy Hollywood special effects, including, unfortunately, a screenplay. If a thousand monkeys were to pound on a thousand keyboards for a thousand years, this would have been the result of the first twenty minutes.

Music

The title song marries third-rate surf rock, bad singing, and lyrics like, "Johnny Yuma don't go, Johnny Yuma stay here. What do you think that you'll find beyond the mountains?" The rest of the music is thankfully unmemorable.

Acting