Way out west, Dean Martin has a plan to do something big. To do it, he needs a Gatling gun. Albert Salmi has one, and is willing to sell it to Martin for a woman - he's stuck out here, where there are none, because he'll be arrested and probably hanged if he goes anywhere else. So Martin goes and lifts Honor Blackman. She's the wife of Retiring cavalry colonel Brian Keith. Also, Martin's fiancée Carol White shows up.

It's a good set-up for a comedy, and Andrew McLaglen directs it drily, with lots of old-time character actors. Paul Fix and his son-in-law Harry Carey Jr., Bob Steele, Ben Johnson, all favorites of McLaglen's mentor, John Ford.

One of the things that McLaglen liked to show in his westerns was that the west was a place for men to work, and in this one, he certainly seems a lot less concerned with making sure the images on the screen look good than in making that point.

It's an end-of-the-road for several of the leading actors. Certainly, Martin's movie career was tailing off after the MATT HELM series. The movie itself is a ramshackle affair, giving an air of nothing really getting done until the very end.

I think the only thing that prevents Something Big from being a classic comic western is the awful let down at the end when Dean Martin decides to really do that Something Big he came west from Pennsylvania to do. The shootout at the end if anything is an anti-climax to the wild goings-on that preceded it throughout the movie.

Dean Martin after coming west to seek fame and fortune or at least enough to marry Carol White and support her is the leader of a group of outlaws with Carol's brother Don Knight as his number two. He wants to really make a score, do Something Big before returning to the east and another outlaw Albert Salmi has an interesting proposition for him.

Salmi's been without a woman for way too long now and his sidekick Robert Donner is not one to bring out the love that dare not speak its name. There just ain't too many folks of the female persuasion out in the territory. So if Martin will get him a woman, Salmi can lay his hands on a Gatling Gun to be used in whatever that Something Big scheme will be.

So what does Dino do? He holds up a few stagecoaches and then gets what he considers a proper woman, Honor Blackman famous as Pussy Galore of James Bond fame. The problem there is Dino didn't check her hand for a wedding ring, she's the wife of Brian Keith the commander of the local army post.

Ironically enough this silliness actually works as Brian Keith and chief scout Ben Johnson go searching the territory for Martin and Blackman. The various misadventures of the players goes for most of the film and when Martin does put his big scheme into operation in the last 20 minutes or so of the film, it is so anti-climatic, it's actually a let down.

Something Big is a very funny film for some reason not often shown. All the players do well, but my absolute favorites are Joyce Van Patten, and Judi Meredith the Standish sisters. A pair of frontier widows who really know how to be hospitable to a passing stranger, especially if the stranger is in pants.

Hopefully TCM will get this film and run it and soon.

This is the type of film that is not going to be for every taste. It basically casts Dean Martin as a western bandit who, in exchange for a valuable machine gun, offers to find a mate for the grizzled owner. He keeps robbing coaches traveling across the west looking for an attractive young lady and when he finds her, she turns out to be the wife of one of his old rivals, an Army officer (Brian Keith) getting ready to retire. Martin's plan is to trick the gun owner into giving him the gun without handing over the goods which he intends to keep for himself. When Keith finds out his wife has been kidnapped, he is furious, especially when Martin's intended arrives at his fort searching for him!

Honor Blackman is Keith's prickly wife Martin ends up having his hands full with, while Carol White is the Irish lass who intends to tie Martin down to a good Christian life and clean up his many, many sins. I have to admit that while I found the basic plot line extremely tacky, I could not help but laugh at the goings on many times, particularly the foo-fey dog that Martin kept by his side while committing robberies tightly nestled in his saddle bag. Merlin Olsen ("Little House on the Prairie", "Father Murphy") is funny as the ultra-sensitive assistant to Keith whose feelings are hurt when his desire to present the departing Keith with an Indian chief's hat are taken over by another soldier.

Hollywood loved to spoof their most popular genres, and along with the Kirk Douglas/Henry Fonda Western/Prison movie comedy "There Was a Crooked Man", this takes you into the wild west and provides the viewer with a lot of laughs. I had to force myself to look past the underlying issue of intended rape, which never happens. In short, this is actually pretty clean in spite of some of the insinuations, which may help make it more palatable for sensitive viewers who are fans of the western genre or the fabulous star who always seems to be enjoying himself no matter what role he's playing.