Support Your Local Sheriff! Reviews

This entertaining spoof of western movie cliches features Garner as a stranger who stops off at a small town en route to Australia, a running joke that works well through the rest of the film. He's engaged as the new sheriff, taking the job because he can't afford the boomtown's inflated prices. He hires Elam, the town drunk, as a deputy. After Garner arrests Dern and has the outlaw help build the new jail, Dern's father, Brennan, gets angry and summons the rest of his family to rescue the wayward son. A climactic street shootout results in a win by Garner as he holds a gang off with an apparently empty cannon. Unlike the later BLAZING SADDLES (1974), SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF has a good time with the western cliches but still shows respect for the formula western. Garner underplays winningly; Brennan is hilarious in a virtual parody of his role in MY DARLING CLEMENTINE (1946).