Frisco Kid (1979)

Editor's Note In Robert Aldrich's hysterical comedic Western THE FRISCO KID, a sweetly innocent Polish rabbi, Avram Belinsky (Gene Wilder), travels through 1850s America toward his new congregation and wife in San Francisco. Along the way, he forms an uneasy alliance with an inept bank robber, Tommy (Harrison Ford). As Avram teaches Tommy about the Torah, Tommy instructs Avram on how to handle a gun, and the two cut a meandering, pratfall-filled path across the wild West, encountering Indians, settlers, and merciless outlaws. Aldrich (TOO LATE THE HERO, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?), a master of the penetrating psychodrama, the rousing war saga, and the icy, violent noir, here slips the standard Western concoction a dizzying, hilarious mickey of slapstick humor with his two feckless protagonists, played with gusto and perfect timing by Wilder and Ford.

	Gene Wilder
	Harrison Ford
	Ramon Bieri
	Val Bisoglio
	Frank De Vol - Original Music By
	Howard W. Koch, Jr. - Executive Producer
	Jack Horger, et. al. - Editor
	Mace Neufeld, et. al. - Producer
	Michael Elias, et. al. - Writer
	Robert Aldrich - Director
	Robert B. Hauser - Cinematographer
	Terence Marsh - Production Designer

Chicago Sun-Times 5 of 10
...what it doesn't have is a consistent comic logic to lead us through its Western smorgasbord. The movie's director is Robert Aldrich, who is one of Hollywood's most consistent craftsmen and who, theoretically, should have been ideal for this material: He's made a semi-speciality out of action-oriented semi-comedies about bands of men (his credits include The Dirty Dozen and The Longest Yard as well as the unsuccessful The Choirboys). - Roger Ebert