There are a couple reasons why BRONCO BILLY isn’t one of the better aged Clint Eastwood pictures. First of all, it’s part of that phenomenon that he was so enamored of Sondra Locke that he kept putting her in movies, but playing his most obnoxious love interests (here a comically snide and uptight heiress whose upper crust accent exaggerates more with each cowboy she comes in contact with). These days that also means you might be reminded that after they broke up he reportedly used his clout to sabotage her career.

It’s also a particularly blunt version of the “yeah he’s sexist but he’s secretly sweet and she’ll come around” trope. Clint’s “Bronco” Billy McCoy coerces Locke’s Antoinette Lily into working as his assistant when she’s just trying to borrow a dime for the pay phone. Then he slaps her on the ass. He does rescue her from rapists (good), but then makes a pass at her (insensitive). Maybe worst of all he interrupts her explanation of why she knows how to shoot guns already and then never follows up. I don’t need to know, but he should care if he’s supposed to be in love with her! Anyway I did not find the magical untightening of the rich lady to be all that charming.

At the same time as all that the movie does have a timeless appeal that I can’t resist, because it’s about a tight crew of show-people who have worked together for years, get mad at each other but would die for each other, and have sacrificed to live unconventional lives dedicated to this thing they do together, this traveling wild west show.

Billy has a trusty right hand man named Lefty (Bill McKinney, CLEOPATRA JONES), who actually has a hook for a right hand because he blew the original one off in an ill-conceived shotgun act. The crew also includes the announcer Doc (Scatman Crothers, THE ARISTOCATS), the rope artist “Lasso Leonard James” (Sam Bottoms, SHADOW FURY), the “Rattle Snake Dancer” Chief Big Eagle (Dan Vadis, THE WHITE BUFFALO) and his wife Lorraine Running Water (Sierra Pecheur, KALIFORNIA).

Billy, “the greatest trick shooter, the fastest draw, the toughest hombre,” rides in and does tricks on his horse Buster, shoots some plates, etc. The problem lately is that he can’t seem to get a competent assistant to do “the death defying Wheel of Fortune” finale where she gets tied to a spinning wheel and he puts on a blindfold and shoots the balloons around her. It’s his fault, really: he keeps choosing some young hottie he meets in town instead of anybody with experience, and doesn’t seem concerned that they’re terrified.

It’s a corny show that doesn’t always sell out, but they love doing it. They get mad sometimes when they “can’t afford to buy a girl a drink at a bar,” but they’re passionate about what they do. For example, Big Eagle (who is introduced in the show as “the great-great grandson of the great Apache Indian chief, Geronimo”) defies Billy’s advice to not use real rattlesnakes after he gets bit a couple times. He has too much pride to fake it. That’s not the attitude of a mercenary.

More than once this reminded me of George Romero’s KNIGHTRIDERS, but it came out ten months earlier. It’s not as long or melodramatic or full of motorcycle stunts, but it has similar themes and also similar incidents – getting rowdy with locals at a bar, having to bribe a corrupt sheriff to get a member of the troupe out of jail, being a big hero to local kids while dressed up as old timey characters. What’s particularly cool in this version is the reveal that they’re mostly ex-cons who got out and created this new, positive life for themselves. That’s part of why they’re so loyal to Billy and always say what a “good man” he is, and why they back down when they (rightly) confront him about their pay being overdue and he (sincerely?) expresses disappointment that they would do this for the money. He says “You’re all gonna get what you want, I promise you,” talks about the ranch they’re saving up to build and how “you’re the best bunch of wranglers in America, don’t you ever forget it,” and it turns from a labor dispute to an inspirational moment of unity. Morale completely turns around, somehow.

It’s true that Billy doesn’t do it for the money. They do regular unpaid gigs at an orphange and a mental hospital. It blows Lily’s mind. Who ever heard of such a thing? She comes from a different world – she smokes cigarettes through a holder like the fuckin Penguin, and just had a joyless court house marriage to sleazy schemer John Arlington (Geoffrey Lewis, THE JERICHO MILE) because she has to marry someone before she turns 30 on Saturday or she’ll lose her inheritance. Then Arlington’s limo breaks down, he runs off with her jewelry and she accidentally becomes Billy’s new assistant.

This is not an action movie, but it does have a huge bar brawl (while Merle Haggard and the Strangers are performing), the aforementioned thwarting of a sexual assault, and that other classic trope of the hero happening to be on hand to stop a robbery. He uses his trick shooting on two bank robbers and uses the news coverage to plug his show.

I like how he calls kids “pardners” and gives them corny Hulk Hogan or Mr. T style advice (along with free tickets, which hopefully lead to their parents paying for their own tickets). When Running Water tells him she’s pregnant he calls the baby “the little pard” after firing his guns in celebration.

Like Clint himself, Billy is more nuanced than his persona. When Leonard gets arrested for desertion Billy acts offended, doesn’t push back at Sheriff Dix (Walter Barnes, DAY OF THE ANIMALS) calling him a coward for not wanting to go to Vietnam, and tells the others “he’s a deserter, he gets what he deserves.” Then he goes off to get him out. When they’re face-to-face the concern is “Why didn’t you tell me?,” not “Why did you do it?”

During all the hubbub some bored kids throw firecrackers in the stands, catch fire to some hay on the ground, and burn down the whole tent. There’s a long shot of an American flag consumed by the fire. Later they’re able to get a new tent and it’s made entirely of American flags, because Billy gets help from the mental hospital he performs at, whose patients are used as prison labor making flags for the military. So, you can decide for yourself whether that’s a patriotic statement or not.

Tonally this is pretty close to the Clyde/Which Way duology – mostly sincere, but set in a broad comedy world that doesn’t always try to be believable. The entire premise rests on Lily’s greedy stepmother (Beverlee McKinsey, Guiding Light) and the police assuming Lily has been murdered because she disappears for a while. It can’t be more than a few weeks that she’s on the road, but her short-term husband has already taken an insanity plea for her murder and is locked up in the hospital. Why does he believe she’s dead? I don’t know. Not important. Kinda funny that he’s willing to take the fall for a cut of the inheritance.

The director of photography was David Worth, who I suspect Locke brought in, since he’d done DEATH GAME a few years earlier. He continued with Clint into ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN, but of course we know him as the director of KICKBOXER, LADY DRAGON 1 and 2 and TRUE VENGEANCE. My metaphorical hat is off to him if he shot the opening montage of the sun coming down over the tent and then the lights turning on. Almost a precursor to that signs-of-L.A. montage we all loved in ONCE UPON A TIME …IN HOLLYWOOD.

Oh, by the way the opening credits song is a duet between Clint and Merle Haggard called “Bar Room Buddies,” which about six months later he improved on with “Beers To You,” his duet with Ray Charles for ANY WHICH WAY YOU CAN.

Since I brought up some dated elements I gotta note the “Indian” stuff. I would argue that it’s somewhat progressive for the time in that Chief Big Eagle is a completely equal and not-really-othered member of the troupe. He’s concerned with the preservation of his people’s heritage and has written three books. Of course we might also cringe at the stereotypes in his act and the fact that he’s not played by a Native actor. Vadis was of Greek descent, born in China, raised in the U.S., made his bones in the Italian film industry starring in a bunch of Hercules movies, then spaghetti westerns, then five movies with Clint. His wife in the movie is supposed to be a white girl who adopts his culture, which also plays differently today, even though it fits into the theme when she says “Don’t you understand what Bronco Billy and the Wild West Show are all about? You can be anything you want. All you have to do is go out and become it.”

Pecheur was a character actor for a while, mostly did bit parts (sometimes credited as “Sierra Bandit), maybe her most remembered role is on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. But unless there’s another Sierra Pecheur it seems she later became a very successful artist. She’s apparently still making sculptures even though she’s in her 80s now. Check out her stuff, it’s really cool.

BRONCO BILLY was written by Dennis Hackin, who had previously written Peter Fonda’s WANDA NEVADA and later (I’m afraid) NO HOLDS BARRED. More recently, believe it or not, he reworked BRONCO BILLY as a musical that was staged in L.A. in 2019 and in a limited run in London in 2024. According to the L.A. Times the story was very close to his heart, written as a tribute to his parents who he described as “city slickers in Chicago who wanted to be cowboys and cowgirls” and moved to Arizona. The paper dismissed the movie as “a humorless, casually sexist 1980 movie from Clint Eastwood’s ill-considered comedy phase,” preferring the stage update and appreciating Hackin’s “soft spot for the story, in which people follow their dreams and carry the cowboy code of honor into the present day.”

I love that Pecheur and Hackin seem to have lived the BRONCO BILLY ethic of humbly dedicating themselves to the personally meaningful art that they believe in. Clint does it too but those two did it without being superstars. They’re in their own corners doing their thing that they love, and doing it well. That’s what I aspire to and encourage others to do. I know it’s silly to treat whichever one of the dwindling number of un-reviewed Clint movies I choose to write about as a tarot card or fortune cookie about the coming year, but it just so happens that this is the energy I want to take into 2026. More than ever we need to be who we want to be, stay loyal and caring to our friends, and work together to live the life and create the art that feeds our souls. Happy New Year everybody. Now let’s hit the trail.

APPENDIX:

Previous entries in the Clint Eastwood new year tradition:

2013 – TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE

2014 – A PERFECT WORLD

2015 – THE OUTLAW JOSEY WALES

2016 – KELLY’S HEROES

2017 – PINK CADILLAC

2018 – TWO MULES FOR SISTER SARA

2019 – THE MULE

2020 – WHITE HUNTER BLACK HEART

2021 – THE GAUNTLET

2022 – ESCAPE FROM ALCATRAZ
2023- JOE KIDD
2024 – HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER
2025 – THE EIGER SANCTION