Young Billy Young (1969)

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

'Old Ben Kane' might have been the better title for this Western flick. Just like his namesake from "High Noon", First Deputy Ben Kane (Robert Mitchum) refuses to leave town when he knows the bad guys are coming just for him. Young Billy Young (Robert Walker Jr.) valiantly intends to help out, even after Kane cold-cocked him once when he snuck up on his campfire in the middle of the night. For his trouble, Kane knocks him out again so he doesn't interfere with one man's mission to go up against a dozen outlaws. You might wonder how rational Kane himself was under the circumstances.There's a good reason Angie Dickinson used to show up in these Westerns with folks like Mitchum and Dean Martin, one look at her opening dance hall number will clue you in. As the sometime lady pal of Gaslight Saloon owner John Behan (Jack Kelly), Lily Beloit recalls her association with Kane back in Dodge City, and the reason Kane is all fired up to go against Frank Boone (John Anderson), who actually doesn't show up until the last part of the story. With Dave Carradine in the role of Jesse Boone, I was once again reminded how much the Carradine Brothers resembled John Anderson, who could have played their father, and actually did in the same year's "Heaven With a Gun" in which he and David portrayed a father and son.Except for the name of John Behan in the story, I would never have guessed this was based on a novel titled "Who Rides With Wyatt". There's really no other connection I can decipher among the principals being based on Wyatt Earp or his contemporaries, so I guess one has to take the film maker's word for it. Although Kane using his weapon to pistol whip Billy a couple of times came pretty close to resembling Wyatt Earp's style.See if you can catch a really weird error in that confrontation between Kane and Frank Boone. Riding atop Charlie's (Paul Fix) stagecoach, Kane shoots Boone and there's a quick cut to Boone lying on the ground. When the camera comes back to the coach, Kane is sitting next to Charlie, but after another quick cutaway, Kane is back on top of the coach! Talk about lightning fast, he did that almost as quick as hauling Lily off to get married!

From time to time I know right from the start of a movie this will not be a joyride. The title song is sung by no one else then Mr. Robert Mitchum himself .IMO he was a not a good singer but a very fine actor. Unfortunately this is not the only bad music score choice in this movie. The movie has the title Young Billy Young but it's more about a marshal and his revenge. There are some fine flashback scenes and they got repeated again and again. After some time we learn what is all about and then it got us told several times. The plot is underdeveloped as the characters are. Of course Angie Dickenson is beautiful and it's nice to see her in a bathtub. But it shouldn't be the only good reason to watch it. Next to her and Bob Mitchum we see Robert Walker as Billy Young, David Carradine, Jack Kelly and John Anderson. It could have been a more entertaining movie but Director Burt Kennedy made an uneven Paycheque Film. 3/10

This is a very mediocre offering from Burt Kennedy. It is yet another remake of Rio Bravo, but without any added wit or star power to justify the exercise. I gave it 3 out of 10 stars in IMDb and didn't bother to rank it. There were a few things I liked about it: Robert Mitchum makes it watchable. There aren't a whole lot of women who are sexier at age 38 than they are at age 28. Angie Dickinson is one of them. This kid Robert Walker Jr., who plays the Billy Young in the title, has an interesting background. His mother was Jennifer Jones and his father, Robert Walker, was an excellent actor who is best known for his role as the creepy guy in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train". He was also very good as the "spoiled, no good cattle baron's son" in "Veangance Valley". Unfortunately, his son appears to have inherited his mother's acting talent instead of his father's. Look for another poor performance by the kid in "The War Wagon". Nice authentic location i.e. the film is shot mostly on location in southern Arizona where the film is set. It's worth a very hearty laugh when you realize that Robert Mitchum is actually doing the vocals on the title song, which gets played over the opening credits and then again at the end. He sounds like a moose in heat.

Fans of the movie TOMBSTONE and other Wyatt Earp movies may be interested to know that this movie was very loosely based on Will Henry's WHO RIDES WITH Wyatt, a heavily fictionalized novel about Wyatt Earp's war with the Cowboy gang and his feud with Cowboy-sympathizing sheriff John Behan. In the novel, the "Billy Young" character is actually Johnny Ringo, who--in a completely fictional subplot--is at first protected, befriended and mentored by Wyatt (as Billy is by Kane in this movie), until Ringo gets more and more deeply involved with Curly Bill and the Clantons and Wyatt has to come after him. The novel is grim and dark, with an admirable but not very likable Wyatt. The movie is entertaining fluff, with a storyline that has less and less to do with the novel and the real Wyatt Earp as it goes along. Surprisingly, a good bit of the dialogue of the novel is retained, at least in the early scenes with Kane, and the script even retains the Earp-Behan-Lily triangle. The Behan character is even called "John Behan," and gets a surprising comeuppance from a surprising source. David Carradine is his usual watchable self as a more likable version of Ike Clanton.