***

Likable comedy starring Andy Griffith as Will Stockdale, a Georgia hillbilly drafted into the Air Force whose boisterous naivete makes life miserable for his complacent commanding officer.  Originally a novel by Mac Hyman set during World War II, the book was updated to a peace time setting for a television adaptation and later a Broadway play, both written by Ira Levin (of Rosemary's Baby fame) and starring Griffith.  Don Knotts also appears (as he did on Broadway) as the officer in charge of conducting manual dexterity tests on new recruits.  Episodic and overlong yet unpretentious, with an undeniably charming performance by Griffith.

**

Sparse, British-made Western starring Raquel Welch.  As Hannie Caulder, she swears revenge on the three not-too-bright brothers (Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Srother Martin) who killed her husband then raped her.  Robert Culp, a fast-drawing bounty hunter, teaches her how to shoot.  Despite being billed as "the first lady gunfighter," Welch never comes off as tough, driven, or angry enough to carry the film, which leaves it in the hands of the bumbling brothers, who are played more for comedy than anything else.  Robert Culp does what he can to save the picture, but he's only a second banana.  With hippie-colored credits, Christopher Lee as a gunsmith, Diana Dors as a madam, and the pointless addition of a mysterious man in black.

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Uncanny Balderdash

How the man (it must have been a man) responsible for this poster wasn't hooted and howled out of the boardroom is a mystery.

Surrounding a woman, dressed and posed in a sexually suggestive manner, with the three men who murdered her husband and serially raped her as if they were all part of the same happy gang must rank as one the top five most insensitive and offensive advertising blunders in all of cinema.

That said, I think the movie would have been improved if, instead of being in tight pants and a poncho for most of the film, this is how Ms. Welch had been featured.

**
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Pretentiously slow and largely dull sword and sorcery, based on the popular character created by Robert E. Howard in the 1930s.  As a young boy Conan witnesses the massacre of his people, including the murder of his father and the beheading of his mother, by a triumvirate of evildoers led by Thulsa Doom (James Earl Jones), the shapeshifting head of a cult of snake worshippers.  Freed after years of slavery, Conan the man (Arnold Schwarzenegger) seeks vengeance, sleeping with a witch and killing a giant snake along the way.  As well as picking up a couple of companions, with one of whom, the thief Valeria (Sandahl Begman), he falls in love.  Schwarzenegger, who certainly looks the part, isn't given much to say, metaphorically mirroring the entire film.

Ebert the Politically Correct

Roger Ebert, the late reviewer of films for the Chicago Sun-Times, liked the film, but admitted its conclusion, which featured Nordic Arnold Schwarzenegger defeating black James Earl Jones, disturbed him.  "Am I being too sensitive?" he wonders.  Given that black Jones is responsible for the murder of Schwarzenegger's white father and the beheading of his white mother and that this incident is passed off by Ebert as a convenience (since it "gets them neatly out of the way"), I would have to conclude that a more fitting question would have been, "Am I being ridiculous?"