The most lazy screenwriting I've ever seen. Nothing any of the characters do makes any sense, so that you completely don't care what happens next.
Writerascritic went on a diatribe, but he has as many "authenticity" holes as the movie. Historically, it was actually rare for a woman to be raped in the west and if she was, the man was usually killed as soon as he was located.
I had never heard of this until a few days ago (usually not a good sign) and found it on Encore Westerns the same week (also usually not a good sign). But it had Coburn, O'Connor, and Akins in it so I was thinking for the best.
My God, what an awful "dreck" this movie is!! I guess this must be the proverbial "one-joke-movie", but I couldn't find that one joke.
"Waterhole #3" always hits the spot. It's fast moving and has a lot of laughs.
I liked it better than I would have once I realized that it was actually written by a film student I knew. This formerly devout, still a sweetheart guy was talking big with a typical male swagger of the mid-60s, but when I watched it with my eyes open to a certain character conflict, I could see that Billie, who in a sense is given nothing, is actually given quite a bit as a character.
If you ever want to see a film that has hilarity throughout the entire film, then you've got to see this one. "Waterhole # 3" is one of the best western comedies ever made as it has nearly all the classic clichés written into it.
WATERHOLE NUMBER 3 is a great revisionist Western of the 1960s, with Coburn and O'Connor in great comic form. The first shootout in the film was "kinda" imitated by Steven Spielberg in "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1982, when Harrison Ford just shoots an Arab attacker brandishing a sabre.
I have to laugh at the girlie "men" so indignantly panning a movie from 50 years ago. Grow up, you wimps, and take notes.
