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Dec 13, 2014Nursebob rated this title 2.5 out of 5 stars
One of the more famous Cinemascope musicals featuring hunky Howard Keel and mousy Jane Powell in the leads, backed by a cast of mainly nobodies including a pro baseball player and male ballet dancer. The painted backdrops and plywood frontier sets are cheesy, but the musical numbers are athletic enough even if the dubbed songs themselves are completely forgettable. It’s the sheer campiness of it all that appealed to me though; the strutting cowboys, the awkward lyrics (“A man can’t sleep when he sleeps with sheep…”), and an all-girl lingerie cat fight featuring sexy bloomers and corsets. “It’s indecent if you ask me…” laments a shopkeeper’s portly wife, “…one lone woman with seven scroungy backwoodsmen.” I guess one woman’s nightmare is another man’s dream come true. Musical cinema just doesn’t get any gayer than this.