WARNING: SPOILERS

In the 1970s I went from seeing every Gene Wilder movie in a movie theater to not seeing any of them anywhere. It went: “Young Frankenstein,” wow, “Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother,” done, “Silver Streak,” yay, “World’s Greatest Lover,” okay—all of which I’m pretty sure I saw at the second-run Boulevard Theater in South Minneapolis. But after that, nah, I couldn’t be bothered. (Though way later, in the summer of 1989, I did see “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” at the Skyway in downtown Minneapolis. Shouldn’t've.)

So what changed for me? 

“World’s Greatest Lover” debuted in Dec. 1977 and “The Frisco Kid” in July ’79, so I went from being on the cusp of 15 to 16 ½. I went from being a ninth grader at Ramsey to someone getting ready for junior year at Washburn. So I guess priorities changed. I remember some disgruntlement with “World’s Greatest Lover,” too. I remember thinking: “Is this supposed to be funny?” It might’ve been the beginning of my critical thinking about film. 

More than just me, “The Frisco Kid,” rests at an inflection point for the country and culture. In the documentary “Remembering Gene Wilder,” Mel Brooks talks about how the producers of “The Producers” wanted a more traditional leading man to play timid accountant Leo Bloom, but Brooks went with Wilder. The Cisco Kid in “Blazing Saddles” was originally traditional leading man Gig Young, but he was going through the DTs, so at the last minute Brooks called Wilder. The 1970s let this happen. It was an era of untradition. Let’s go a different way, it said. The 1980s was the era of doubling down on the traditions we thought we’d gotten rid of. Let’s go back, it said.

This movie is part of that parting of the ways. Wilder, the star, is the nebbishy past. The second lead, Harrison Ford, is the handsome future. He’s the doubling down on old traditions.

Shockingly unfunny
By the way: How lost, how unsure of their footing, were studio executives in the 1970s? After Harrison Ford co-starred in “Star Wars,” the most popular movie of all time, they stuck him in WWII stuff (“Force 10,” “Hanover Street”), and opposite nebbishy leads (“Heroes,” here). Basically they were saying, “We don’t know what to do with him! Help!"

George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to the rescue. Here are the six movies Harrison Ford made after this one:

• 1980: “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back” (No. 1 for the year)
• 1981: “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (No. 1)
• 1982: “Blade Runner” (No. 27)
• 1983: “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi” (No. 1)
• 1984: “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (No. 2)
• 1985: “Witness” (No. 6, AA nom)

It was less stellar for the guy with nontraditional leading-man looks:

• 1980: “Stir Crazy” (No. 3 for the year)
• 1982: “Hanky Panky” (No. 69)
• 1984: “The Woman in Red” (No. 41)
• 1986: “Haunted Honeymoon” (No. 82)
• 1989: “See No Evil, Hear No Evil” (No. 27)
• 1990: “Funny About Love” (No. 107)

Richard Pryor helped Wilder in 1980, and a little in 1989. But you see the trajectory. The trajectory's not good.

“The Frisco Kid” didn’t help. It’s shockingly bad. It’s a comedy-western but there’s not a laugh in it.

In 1850, San Francisco’s Jewish community needs a rabbi, and the mucky-mucks in Poland are in disagreement over who to send. For some reason, the leader of the council wants to send Avram Belinski (Wilder), whom we first see ice-skating in back and winking at a kid, but the rest of the council is adamant against him. Why? Too innocent? Docile? We never find out—lessen we speak Hebrew. Anyway the leader overrules the majority and sends him.

How does an innocent Jew do in 1850s America? Yeah, it’s brutal. This might be the real reason I never went to see this. Maybe I saw this scene, or caught whiffs of it, and said “No, thanks.”

In Philadelphia, Avram tries to take a boat to San Francisco but it’s already left. Two men in line, Darryl and Matt Diggs (George DiCenzo and William Smith), then tell Avram a sob story about needing to see their dying mother in SF but now they have no way of getting there—and they’ve already sold their horses and wagon! Ach. So Avram buys the horses and wagon back so he can ride with them to San Francisco. Yeah, you see it coming. They ride off the wagon-train trail—a shortcut, Avram is told—and their partner Mr. Jones (Ramon Bieri) rides up, grabs Avram from behind, pummels him, strips him to his long underwear, takes his Torah, and tosses him out the back. All the while he’s pleading (and bleeding), and all the while the Diggs brothers are laughing.

No way 16-year-old me wanted to see this. I can barely watch it now.

So that’s America, the bad. America, the good, is when he runs into an Amish community—initially mistaking them for Jewish, not a bad bit in theory—and they give him shelter, money, and send him back on his journey.

At this point, the movie becomes rather episodic, as if ticking off the set scenes of Hollywood westerns. Avram gets on a train that is robbed by a masked bandit (Harrison Ford), while Avram is washing up. (Question: Did 1850s trains have washrooms?) Tommy implies his partner is standing behind all the good folks with their hands up, so I assumed everyone would assume Avram was that partner, but that’s not the gag. No, Avram returns to his seat, sees everyone with their hands in the air, and thinks they’re all doing a “Simon Says” bit a little girl had been leading them in earlier. That’s the gag. It falls flat. As does (no pun intended) the bit about the busty lady sharing a seat with Avram. Is she trying to scam him? Is she just an excuse to get more cleavage in the movie? Her scene is there and gone and leaves no trace.

Then Avram works on a railroad, where, driving in spikes with sledgehammers, he keeps hitting the foot of a Mexican (Joe Kaap). It’s not funny. An Asian guy (Clyde Kusatsu) makes fun of Avram’s accent. It’s not funny. These bits last a minute. They’re there and gone and leave no trace.

Avram is attempting to fish in the Terrence Hill manner (holding a thick stick over his head mid-stream, waiting for the right moment) when the train robber, Tommy, returns and decides to help by shooting the fish. Why? It’s an odd team-up. Avram is both hapless and keeps insisting on his own way—and it’s usually not a smart way. Yeah, let’s jump off this cliff on our horses rather than ride a few miles out of our way. Yeah, let’s ride into this mountain blizzard rather than wait it out. Tommy keeps following rather than leading, as if he’s the stranger in a strange land.

At one point, and despite everything that’s occurred, Avram waxes rhapsodic on what a wonderful country America is: “There are no walls around these cities. You don’t have to worry about the soldiers coming in from the next town and killing people.” As he’s doing this, Tommy robs a bank and suddenly they’re on the lam, one step ahead of a lynch mob. But even with Avram refusing to ride on the Sabbath, they get away from this plot only to land in another: they’re captured by Indians. Now Avram is suddenly the stoic, strong one, and this intrigues Chief Gray Cloud (Val Bigoglio), so they have a conversation about life, death, gods. After Avram says his god doesn’t make it rain, it starts raining. After Avram says he doesn’t dance, he leads the tribe in a traditional Jewish dance.

Then they’re in a monastery, where brothers have taken a vow of silence, and where Avram’s garrulousness causes one of them to break his vow. None of it is funny.

Throughout, we keep getting versions of this exchange:

Tommy [angry]: I ain’t going with you!
Avram: Who’s asking you!

Exactly. Avram needs Tommy, not vice versa. It’s like Tommy is the movie’s Magic Gentile. I thought by the end we’d get an explanation about why he does this but we don’t. And just when they do split up, guess who reappears? The Diggs boys and Mr. Jones.

You’re all clear, kid
The movie’s working title was “No Knife”—the Indians are amazed Avram doesn’t carry one—and I assume screenwriters Michael Elias and Frank Shaw, director Robert Aldrich, and Warner Bros. hoped for a bit of “Destry Rides Again”: the inherent strength of the peaceful man. But I barely bought it with “Destry” and I definitely don’t buy it here. A lawless world is a brutal one. You need more than a Torah. You need a friend with a gun.

That’s what Avram gets. He re-encounters his tormentors, demands his money, gets decked, gets back up, demands his money, gets decked, gets back up, and decks Matt Diggs. Which just angers the bad guys. They're about to kill ol’ Avram, or at least maim him on the bar, when Tommy shows up in his longjohns (from whoring upstairs) to save the hero. Hey, just like Han Solo! You’re all clear, kid. Now let’s blow this thing and go home! Except here he does all the shooting. He demonstrates his sure shot and makes them leave. Why doesn’t he kill them? Because movie. How many more times do they return? Two more times!

The first is when Avram and Tommy are frolicking in the ocean surf because Avram asks Tommy to be his best man at an arranged wedding and Tommy has never had a friend before, let alone a bestie. During the shoot-out, after Avram kills Mr. Jones but runs out of bullets, the big dilemma becomes: Will Avram be able to pull the trigger before Darryl gets a fallen gun and kills them both? He will! Does he feel awful about it? He does! But more, he feels awful that he tried to save the Torah rather than his friend. A stone’s-throw from SF, he decides to give up the rabbihood.

There, it gets even more convoluted. In front of the sister of his betrothed, Rosalie (Penny Peyser), with whom we always knew he’d wind up, Avram pretends to be an American; and when the entire Jewish community descends on the tavern, they assume Tommy is the rabbi. But then Avram owns up. But then Matt Diggs reappears and accuses Avram of killing his brother. We get a classic western duel outside, Matt loses, is banished, wedding. L’Chaim.

Again, there’s not a laugh in this thing.

The screenwriters appear to have done a lot of TV together (“Love, American Style,” Glen Campbell, Pat Paulsen, Bill Cosby, “Co-ed Fever”), while Elias got third credit on “The Jerk,” but overall their CVs doesn’t inspire. Director Robert Aldrich, meanwhile, did good work in the 1950s with “Kiss Me, Deadly,” in the 1960s with “The Dirty Dozen,” and in the early 1970s with “The Longest Yard,” but maybe he was done. This thing is just a mess: unfunny, brutish, long. And the tone keeps shifting. Avram’s inner man keeps shifting—and not in a way that indicates growth. It’s just all over the place.

Neither of the two leads distinguish themselves. But afterward Harrison Ford went on to become Harrison Ford while Gene Wilder faded away. Despite this, I still miss him.