What to Stream: Clint Eastwood in 'Bronco Billy'

Bronco Billy (1980) iTunes, Amazon Instant

The Basics: A cowboy comedy starring and directed by Clint Eastwood
If You Liked: Every Which Way But Loose, True Grit
The Nugget: Eastwood is at his funniest and most touching as the leader of a ragtag, bumbling Wild West show

The forlorn, rough-and-tumble comedies of Eastwood's late 70s-early 80s period are almost a lost genre, but still a delight to take in: Here's one that is rarely talked about anymore, but worth a look. If American film has a Don Quixote, it may be Bronco Billy, stumbling across the gaudy landscape of the 1970s and trying to preserve a dying cowboy culture. A New Jersey shoe salesman reinvented as a wild-west hero, he manages to be both pathetic and inspirational in his devotion to the slightly-unhinged code of a world that probably never was. (Asked why he shot his wife after catching her in bed with his best friend, he explains in anguish, "Well, you don’t shoot your best friend.") Eastwood gracefully captures the dying light of the Old West as his would-be legend tries to keep the moth-eaten show — with its not-ready-for-the-big-top snake charmers and Scatman Crothers' delightfully hangdog ringmaster — on the road. Bonus points: Merle Haggard makes a rare cameo performing his song "Misery and Gin."

Photo credit: ©Everett Collection