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. In this case, Coburn just uses his Winchester rifle to blow away a challenger armed only with a Colt, which he had not even drawn yet (but then you could argue that WATERHOLE borrowed the idea from Sergio Leone's A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS).
The film's unifying element is the song, with some wonderful lyrics, and the sharp-tongued repartee between Coburn and O'Connor, who is particularly comical riding a mule.
The "infamous" rape scene is politically incorrect today, but was a laugh when it came out, and if one judges the film on the basis of that anachronism alone, one should not watch movies, let alone review them.
Photography, action sequences, acting and direction are all competent. Alas, there is one negative aspect that hurts my rating of the film: the ending is too evasive, fuzzy almost. But, by then, I had certainly had my fun and will certainly re-watch this film at some point.
The film's unifying element is the song, with some wonderful lyrics, and the sharp-tongued repartee between Coburn and O'Connor, who is particularly comical riding a mule.
The "infamous" rape scene is politically incorrect today, but was a laugh when it came out, and if one judges the film on the basis of that anachronism alone, one should not watch movies, let alone review them.
Photography, action sequences, acting and direction are all competent. Alas, there is one negative aspect that hurts my rating of the film: the ending is too evasive, fuzzy almost. But, by then, I had certainly had my fun and will certainly re-watch this film at some point.