Billy Two Hats (1974)

Another stop on my journey through various films I vaguely recall being released in my youth, but which I never saw and subsequently vanished, Billy Two Hats (1974) is a western from an era when they no longer made westerns.  At least at the volume or scale that they once did.  By the mid seventies the genre was deeply unfashionable, with only westerns being made (outside of TV movies and series) if they fell into the category of 'revisionist westerns', which questioned the conventions of the genre and presented a far grittier, dirtier version of the Old West than classic westerns had ever done.  In this context, Billy Two Hats is something of a curiosity, on several levels.  While it isn't exactly 'revisionist' - both plot and characters fall into established western tropes - it is shot in a 'gritty' style, with a realistic, grimy look rather than the slickness of traditional westerns.  It is also very minimalist, taking place mainly in rocky, semi-desert and very sparsely populated outdoor locations.

Ultimately, it is one of those old outlaw/young sidekick pursued by relentless lawman stories, a staple of the traditional western, offering little that is innovative.  Gregory Peck affecting a not very convincing Scottish accent provides a distraction from some fairly banal dialogue, which the film falls into every time the action flags.  Which is all too often as the film progresses: a bright and brisk start with some well choreographed action soon loses momentum as the pace slows and action is replaced by talk.  By the last third, it feels as if the script has run out of ideas completely, with the young sidekick given a fairly arbitrary romance with a rancher's wife and Peck's outlaw running into a band of troublesome Indians, before the reappearance of the pursuing Marshal rushes everything to a hasty climax.  It's actually pretty well directed by Ted Kotcheff, who makes the most of his locations, (the film was shot in Israel, thereby avoiding the usual over-familiar US locations featured in every other Hollywood western).  Billy Two Hats is quite enjoyable, but ultimately unmemorable, offering nothing new - after watching it, it doesn't seem surprising that it was one of those seventies films that quickly faded from view.