Kid Blue (USA, 1973) 100 min color DIR: James Frawley. SCR: Bud Shrake. PROD: Marvin Schwartz. MUSIC: Tim McIntire, John Rubinstein. DOP: Billy Williams. CAST: Dennis Hopper, Warren Oates, Peter Boyle, Ben Johnson, Lee Purcell, Janice Rule, Ralph Waite, Clifton James, Jack Starrett, M. Emmet Walsh, Richard Rust, Howard Hesseman. (20th Century Fox)
The few who bothered to review this little-seen western have remarked that its star Dennis Hopper is too old for his role. Yes, at 37 years old, perhaps he is a bit long in the tooth to be playing “a kid”, but in the Old West, the term “kid” was used as more of a slang term than merely as a reflection of someone’s age. In this oddball western, Hopper is the unlucky outlaw Kid Blue, who decides, after a hilariously bungled train robbery in the opening scene, that it’s time to lead a normal, civilized life. He decides to settle down in this town whose main industry is a huge factory at the outskirts that employs (read: exploits) Native Americans.
Kid Blue befriends a married couple (Warren Oates, Lee Purcell) whose fortune has derived from the factory. Out in Hell’s half acre, he also becomes friendly with a crackpot inventor (Peter Boyle) who is working on a curious device that can make a man fly! Nonetheless, he is constantly taunted by a sheriff (Ben Johnson) who is convinced “the kid” is up to no good. In one bar fight scene, we see just how dangerous this lawman is. Alas, Kid Blue realizes that this thing called civilization isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. His attempts at domesticity are foiled, usually by his own ineptitude. Oates and Purcell attempt to turn him into a aristocrat (literacy seems to be the key to the upper class), but he instead has a fling with the wife. His wild behaviour still comes out, even in a no-brainer job of sweeping up hair in the barber shop. He ends up working in the factory with the Natives, and finally, Kid Blue makes a last gasp at his idea of the western outlaw, by recruiting a ragtag team of fellow workers to pull off a robbery. The movie’s ambiguous ending may seem like a cheat, but as one more thinks about it, one more realizes how sensible it is. The war between the young and old, the civil and the savage, just rolls on.
I don’t believe that Kid Blue has ever been released to home video in any format. And considering who now owns the Fox library, it probably never will be. My viewing of it was courtesy of -ahem- a “collector’s copy”, from the good old days of tape trading. While not a “lost classic” by any means, it deserves wider recognition.