cult film freak: MARA CORDAY, WILLARD PARKER & TIMOTHY CAREY 'NAKED GUN'

Title: NAKED GUN Year: 1956 Rating: ***

Before becoming the theatrical franchise for POLICE SQUAD, the title NAKED GUN referred to a b-Western where the first half sets up expository dialogue involving the characters in a small, dangerous town that mainly consists of a jailhouse and saloon indoors, and a hanging square outside, are part of some kind of curse...

Involving a plot-line that becomes clear over halfway through: as token stranger Willard Parker was sent to return a stolen chestful of jewels to the rightful owner, a Spanish woman long dead, survived by an adult daughter...

Mara Corday in NAKED GUN with Tom Brown

Initially unknown to be creature-feature ingenue Mara Corday as one of two freshly-arrived saloon girls, who, led by slightly older and far tougher scene-stealing Veda Ann Borg (THE FEARMAKERS), dodge fist-flying scuffles between local grimacing goon Timothy Carey and buried-co-lead Tom Brown as a knife-throwing gambler, having bought-out vengeful bar-owner Barton MacClane, secretly in cahoots with noose-happy judge Billy House...

Turns out these two really want the loot... but the energetic characters mean more than the post-heist story, and had this been the pilot of a TV series, NAKED GUN would've been a pretty neat crooked-town series.