When I bought my first DVD player, I had to have a DVD to try out, so I found an old favorite in the bargain bin: “Support Your Local Sheriff.” So I don’t need to be watching it right now on TCM, but I am anyway.

I always have fond feelings for movies I showed when I was in charge of the campus movies back at Famous Televangelist University, and this was one of them. It’s a tongue-in-cheek sendup of western movie cliches, with James Garner as a brash and breezy gunfighter who agrees to take the job of sheriff in a small town he passes through on his way to Australia. Garner is great, and so are Jack Elam, Walter Brennan, Bruce Dern and Joan Hackett. It’s loads of fun.

The movie was followed by “Support Your Local Gunfighter,” which sounds like a sequel but which just has many of the same cast playing completely different characters in a completely different story.

[imdb]0065051[/imdb]