Sam Whiskey

Plot synopsis:
Sam Whiskey (Burt Reynolds), an adventurer and rogue in the Old West, is seduced by widow Laura Breckenridge (Angie Dickinson) into promising to retrieve $250,000 in gold bars from a riverboat that sank in Colorado's Platte River. The gold had been stolen by Laura's late husband from the Denver Mint and replaced by lead plated fakes. She offers Sam $20,000 to recover and return it before the theft is discovered and her family name is ruined. Sam enlists the help of Jedidiah Hooker (Ossie Davis), a local blacksmith, and O. W. Bandy (Clint Walker), an Army friend turned inventor, offering them shares of the reward.
They locate the sunken riverboat, unaware that they are being watched by Fat Henry Hobson (Rick Davis) and his gang. The gold is fifteen feet below the river's surface, so Bandy fashions a diving helmet for Sam out of a bucket and bellows, but Fat Henry and his gang capture Jed and Bandy. Thinking they have drowned Sam, hiding in the riverboat's smoke stack, they recover the gold and prepare to kill their captives. With the help of one of Bandy's homemade machine guns, Sam frees his partners and they start for Denver with the gold. Just as they are tempted at a crossroads to head for Mexico with their haul, Laura shows up to greet them.
Assuming the identity of a government inspector, Sam enters the mint and deliberately damages a gold-plated bronze bust of George Washington displayed in the lobby. He then insists on having it repaired and takes it to a blacksmith's shop, where Jed makes a mold of the bust and recasts the recovered gold. Fat Henry later breaks into the shop and steals the bronze original, thinking that it was made by Sam and his men to disguise the pilfered bars. Sam returns the new bust to the mint, and his men, posing as plumbers, conceal themselves until nightfall, when they melt down the bust and recast it into gold bars. On a train leaving Denver the next morning, Sam splits the $20,000 with Jed and Bandy but keeps Laura for himself.

Tags: cult, violence, comic

Review:
For some reason, they were playing a triple-shot of Burt Reynolds westerns: Navajo Joe, The Man who Loved Cat Dancing and Sam Whiskey.Now I grew up in the Eighties so I missed most of Reynolds movies; last year I hunted down and watched many for which he is best known: Smokey and the Bandit (rip-roaring hilarity), Stroker Ace (yuck), Cannonball Run (meh) and Hooper (my all-time favorite, ridiculously entertaining).
I thought I had seen all there was to see from ol' Burt, but Sam Whiskey pleasantly surprised me.This isn't really a western, it's more like a heist movie set on the frontier.
While there is some of that, for the most part this film revolves around a "reverse-heist;" In this case, Burt and his team played by Ossie Davis(very funny and amiable as a blacksmith) and Clint Walker (imposing hulk of a man who's gentle on the inside) are trying to return some gold to the US mint.
They work out a suitably ingenious and ludicrous scheme (the cornerstone for every caper flick) and work it out.While the proceedings are executed largely for laughs there are surprising amounts of edge-of-your-seat suspense as various curveballs are thrown our heroes' way.
The film keeps moving and is engaging, but by no means is it in any hurry.So I would recommend this one to all Burt Reynolds fans, all caper movie fans and generally anyone who is willing to give a 40-year-old easygoing movie a chance.And as an interesting side-note: As if I didn't already realize that I'd watched westerns all weekend -- I thought that actor Clint Walker looked vaguely familiar but couldn't quite place him.
They I looked him up on IMDb...he played the icy bad guy in a Charles Bronson western I'd watched earlier in the weekend, "The White Buffalo." I hadn't placed him because it was such a polar opposite role for him.
So in his career he's pulled a heist on the Denver Mint with Burt Reynolds and got into a gunfight with Charles Bronson on the frontier.
Sam Whiskey is directed by Arnold Laven and written by William W.
It stars Burt Reynolds, Ossie Davis, Clint Walker and Angie Dickinson.
Widow Laura Breckenridge (Dickinson) offers Sam Whiskey (Reynolds) a $20,000 reward for the return of some gold that her late husband had stolen from the Denver mint.
However, she doesn't want the gold for herself, she wants Sam to put it back into the mint before it's found to be stolen and soils her family name!
Maybe it's because I consider myself a Reynolds fan that I found this to be a whole bunch of fun?
That I appear to be at odds with critical consensus about Sam Whiskey's worth as entertainment?
Sam Whiskey knows exactly what it's doing, it mixes the caper movie with a Western setting and lets the principal players have fun with it.
The quadruple lead players bounce off of each other with considerable charming results, the set-up is suitably daft, a reverse robbery if you like, and there's no shortage of suspense and action.
In fact the various twists that arise as Reynolds, Davis and Walker go about their mission of goodwill for the sultry Dickinson, are well implemented into the plot.
True, the direction is hardly inspiring, the quirky nature of the whole thing narrows down the number of film fans it might appeal to and the idea is indeed thin.
Yet for Reynolds fans it should be sought out, to see him at the end of the 60s before "his" time would come in the 70s.
Watch him perform with a comedic glint in his eye, see Dickinson smoulder and raise temperatures, Walker play at odds with his macho persona, and Davis having fun being the tough boy of the group.
Enjoy the cheekiness (Re: ludicrousness) of the caper, the early diving technique on show or sample the verbal amusement that comes from the stars.
Non Reynolds fans should probably knock a point off that rating, though..
It's no mystery that Burt Reynolds is one of the most underestimated actors of our time.
In this particular film, he gave us one of his best comedy-stilish acting ("no-one noticed it", he said) which makes this movie working.
Burt's acting would be enough to make it watchable, but also Ossie Davis and Clint Walker fit well in their roles.For me the remarkable of this movie is a) the way it is directed and edited (it ain't dull for one second), although there are some silly situations (e.g. Burt firing with a machine gun to save his friends killing all his enemies without hitting his friends...), but hey, it's a comedy and it's not the story which is most interesting.
It's the mood of the film and the way characters are portrayed.
It contains a lot of fine jokes and dialogue ("I'm not riding this long way to bury your bird") and chemistry between Burt and Angie Dickinson is amazing.
It's hardly believable, but it is that fact that make the film and these characters charming.I give it a 7 of 10.
Agreeable though middling western by Arnold Laven about a thrilling mint heist.
Sam Whiskey (Burt Reynolds , one of his first ever main cast ) is an rogue adventurer , then he's hired by a gorgeous widow (Angie Dickinson ).
Sam teams up an African-American blacksmith (Ossie Davis) and a tall inventor (Clint Walker) who designs a diving helmet .
Later on , they manage to get hundred pounds of gold bars and put it into a mint house ruled by a stiff-upper-lip superintendent (William Schallert) with anyone aware .
This entertaining movie displays western action , fist-play , bemusing caper , shootouts and lively humor .
Friendly performance by Burt Reynolds at his first serious attempt to be fun and enticing Angie Dickinson who does a brief nudist exhibition and heavily cut by censorship .
This film is one of a number of screen westerns that Burt Reynolds played during the mid-late 1960s and early 1970s .
These movie westerns include Fade-in (1965) by Jud Taylor ; Navajo Joe (1966) by Sergio Corbucci ; 100 rifles (1969) by Tom Gries ; The man who loved Cat Dancing (1973) by Richard T Heffron and the overlong TV series Gunsmoke .
Good secondary cast , as the veteran William Schallert as mint superintendent , Ossie Davis , Clint Walker and last film of Chubby Johnson , habitual support cast in numerous Westerns ; furthermore , Anthony James , usual baddie of the 70s .
Atmospheric musical score and colorful cinematography ; however , the film is made in television style .
Reynolds' undeniable charm and appeal are stretched to their limit in this simple, eternally average western yarn.
He plays the title character, a drifter who is talked into a nearly impossible heist job by the sexually persuasive Dickinson.
The film opens with an enjoyable confrontation between Reynolds and Davis (who would later work together on "Evening Shade".)  The pair later hooks up with gorgeous lunkhead inventor Walker and attempts the job at hand...putting $125,000 worth of gold BACK INTO the Denver mint.
The film has a light tone and has the elements to be amusing and entertaining, but somehow misses the mark.
For one thing, if one removed the scenes of the covered wagon travelling cross country, the film would probably run about 40 minutes!
Also, the plot, as written, is just a little thin to sustain a feature film.
(Was Reynolds afraid of a little beefcake competition?)  Davis does well in his role and Walker has a few nice bits as well.
One mystery that even J.B. Fletcher couldn't solve:  How could anyone, after hearing Reynolds sing in this film, hire him for "At Long last Love"??
Fans of Reynolds and of quirky westerns should enjoy it more than others..
This is a forgotten Burt Reynolds film, that is not really that bad.
This is some humor in Burt's character, and Ossie Davis,  The two were paired again years later in evening shade.
Playing the title role Burt Reynolds settles into the cynical good old boy character he would really shine in for the 70s and 80s in Sam Whiskey.
Burt's playing a man no better than he should be who often goes back and forth on both sides of the law who gets an interesting proposition from widow Angie Dickinson.It seems during the late war between the safe her late husband robbed the Denver Mint of a lot of its bullion.
She wants to give it back, but not so anyone would know it was ever stolen because some fake bullion was left in its place and about to be discovered as the U.S. government is about to withdraw Greenbacks and resume specie type money.
He gets $20,000.00 from Dickinson for he and his associates Ossie Davis and Clint Walker.They to devise quite the caper and that I won't go into.
Reynolds took a lot of his style and persona from James Garner and his Sam Whiskey could have been Jim Rockford in the old west.
Dickinson's the kind of woman you don't turn down, she knows how to keep a man's interest.Special mention goes to Woodrow Parfrey as the inspecting Treasury man from the east.
Without knowing it Parfrey and his hapless checker playing self become an integral part of the caper.A caper western in the tradition of The War Wagon and a good one..
Not even Reynolds is able to muster up charm in this fairly dreary western.
Actually, though set in the wild west, the movie is more of a caper movie than a western.
Fun Western Caper with Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson and Clint Walker.
After being enlisted by a hot widow (Angie Dickinson), a former war spy (Burt Reynolds), a blacksmith (Ossie Davis) and an inventor (Clint Walker) team-up to salvage a treasure in gold bars from a sunken ship in the Platte River, a treasure the woman's husband stole.
They then have to return the gold bars to the Denver Mint before the phony bars are discovered and the woman's family name is tarnished.
But how will they get all those gold bars into the Mint without anyone noticing?People tend to dub this a Western Comedy, but it's not in the silly sense of "Blazing Saddles" (1974) "Texas Across the River" (1966) or "The Duchess and the Dirtwater Fox" (1976).
It's more of a Western Caper with amusing flashes, mainly due to Reynold's fun-loving title character.The same plot was later used in John Wayne's "The Train Robbers" (1973) with Ann-Margret in the Angie Dickinson role, minus the caper in the third act.
They're both worth checking out, but I favor "The Train Robbers" because, to me, the caper in the last act gets kind of tedious, not to mention unbelievable.
Nevertheless, "Sam Whiskey" features a great cast with fun-lovin' chemistry and quality Western locations.It is presumed that the story takes place circa 1870-75 since it is detailed that Sam was a spy during the Civil War and he appears to be around 30-35 tops.
Actually, the earliest the story COULD have taken place would be 1906, which is when the Denver Mint began minting coins, but this would make Whiskey about 65 years old, which he obviously isn't.
Great Fun To Be Had In Burt Reynolds First Good Movie.
Burt Reynolds and Anne Margaret sizzle with on screen chemistry in Burt Reynolds first good movie.Up till this point Burt had been in mostly forgettable movies like "Operation CIA" and "Navajo Joe" or smaller roles in movies like "Angel Baby" and "Armoured Command".
Plot In A Paragraph: Sam Whiskey is an all round nice guy, but with a loud, fast mouth that gets him in trouble.
He is willing to try his hand at just about anything but when the attractive widow Laura offers him a job, he is to salvage gold bars, which Laura's dead husband stole recently, from a sunken ship and secretly bring them back to the mint before they are missed.
But how shall he manage to get several hundred pounds of gold into the mint without anyone noticing??Of the rest of the cast, frequent costar of Burt Reynolds, Sweet Ossie Davies who I adore, is great here, like wise Clint Walker.
Anne Margaret is gorgeous, and it's easy to see how she tempted Reynolds character to do her bidding!!.
it's hard to avoid!) In 1969, movies were much more expensive to produce than today (as far as film stock, negatives, distribution, etc.), so major studio releases had to use certain stock genres, settings, and well known stars to get projects approved.This is one of those projects, and it serves that purpose well.
If you want to see Burt and Angie in their prime, having a good time making a movie, then this time capsule is for you.
It bangs right along, with no slow spots, and it easy to consume and understand.It's a great movie to watch for the flavor of sixties star driven action comedies, but it is very dated, and not well written.
This movie never was never intended to be good, bad, or indifferent.
It was supposed to sell tickets and refreshments when people wanted to get out for the evening.But that's fine - it did its job when it needed to, but skip it unless you're interested in the culture of the time when the movie was made, it doesn't stand alone as a movie of the genre worth watching..
An Amusing "Mission: Impossible" Western Outing with Burt Reynolds.
Burt Reynolds, Clint Walker, and Ossie Davis make up a threesome of thieves in "Rough Night in Jericho" director Arnold Laven's comic western "Sam Whiskey" about an elaborate "Mission: Impossible" heist at the Denver Mint in the 19th century.
Actually, Laura Breckenridge (busty Angie Dickinson of "Rio Bravo") uses her natural endowments to seduce free booting adventurer Sam Whiskey (Burt Reynolds of "Mystery, Alaska") to pull the ultimate job.
First, Sam must raise a quarter of a million dollars in gold ingots from a sunken riverboat at the bottom of the Platte River.
Second, he must then substitute it gold-painted lead bars in the Denver mint with nobody the wiser or Laura may wind up serving time in prison.
Third, he must get away without getting caught so he can enjoy the $20-thousand that she is paying him to pull the job.
Before Sam can pull the job, he has to convince his old inventor buddy O.W. Bandy (Clint Walker of "None But The Brave") and his new blacksmith pal Jed Hooker (Ossie Davis of "BubbaHo-Tep") to help him.
Jed likes the five grand that Sam is going to pay him, but O.W. is reluctant to join them because he was to devote his time to his inventions.
Sam lures O.W. into a liquor drinking contest and gets O.W. so drunk that he passes out and doesn't awaken until Sam and Jed are well on the way to the Platte River to fetch the gold.
Initially, O.W. isn't pleased with Sam's conniving ways and he climbs out of the wagon and grasps the back wheel so it won't roll.
Little do our heroes know it but they are being trailed by a suspicious looking gent wearing thick lensed glasses who likes to surround himself with plug-ugly, hardcase types to do his dirty work.
Just as our heroes are getting a knack for diving, the villain, known only as 'the Fat Man' (Rick Davis of "What Waits Below") and his men overpower O.W. as well Jed who were out in the boat.
Meanwhile, Sam--diving when the villains arrive--hides in the smokestack of the river boat.
The villains end up doing the heavy lifting and pull the entire quarter of a million in gold off the ship.
Sam swims back to shore as the villains are about to hang Jed and O.W. and rescues them, gets the gold, and leaves the villains the worse for their wear.
Afterward, our heroes penetrate the Denver Mint after Laura kidnaps Treasury Inspector Thorston Bromley (Woodrow Parfrey of "Planet of the Apes") and holds him as a hostage while Sam impersonates him so he can get into the mint.
Director Arnold Laven relies on comedy to lessen the far-fetched nature of this western outing and Reynolds delivers a crisp comic performance.
Burt Reynolds fans who haven't seen "Sam Whiskey" are missing a real treat..
Boy, talk about getting from Point A to Point B by the most roundabout way possible, I think Burt Reynolds and crew did it here.
The kicker to this whole story had to be melting down the gold bars recovered from the Bonnie Blue, pouring it into a mold of George Washington's bust, and melting it back down into bars to replace the stolen loot at the Denver mint.
As a caper movie this one really kept you guessing, and it could have all gone South at any point along the way.I guess if you're going to take this story at face value, you have to accept the idea that Sam Whiskey and his new buddies are going to put a quarter million dollars worth of gold back into the Denver mint from which it was stolen by Laura's now dead outlaw husband, and not be tempted to keep it for themselves.
I can't imagine why no one bothered asking Miss Breckenridge where she was getting the twenty grand to pay for the job, but I guess with her figure it didn't really matter.I became a Burt Reynolds fan when I first saw him in "The Longest Yard".
I'd have to say Sam's (Reynolds) first meeting with Laura Breckenridge (Angie Dickinson) was pretty racy even for 1969.Reynolds had a pretty effective team for the reverse heist if you will, Ossie Davis and Clint Walker had credible character introductions for the roles they would assume in the story.
Old time Western fans will get the reference, everyone else will have to look it up.