MovieChat Forums > Rio Lobo (1970) Discussion > Some REALLY bad acting

Some REALLY bad acting

posted 13 years ago by stagebandman
2 replies | jump to latest

The Duke is my all-time favorite, and I love all of his movies, I remember liking this one just as much as the others, when I was 10 years old and saw it in the theater.

But, just having watched it on TV, I have to say, this cast displayed some of the worst acting I can recall in a major motion picture. Jennifer O'Neill was embarrassingly unprepared, and a much better actress in her successive roles (Summer Of '42 & The Carey Treatment), Mike Henry (Sheriff Hendricks) was good in the Tarzan movies, but here, showed why his best role was Jackie Gleason's idiot son in Smokey & The Bandit. Christopher Mitchum, God bless him, had the looks and the voice, but delivered his lines like a GPS. Smart to get out of acting. Jorge Rivero was obviously having trouble with the language. It wasn't until David Huddleston showed up that it stopped looking like a student film with a big payday for the Duke. Thank goodness for the veterans like them and Elam, Davis, French & Faulkner!

Amazingly, Sherry Lansing came off as, not only extremely hot, but very convincing as well. She might have done well as an actress, but, then, she certainly made the right choice.

If we all liked the same movie, there'd only be one movie!

[–] CyrustheSoSo 13 years ago

Duke was phoning this one in, too, though he wasn't nearly as bad as most of the supporting cast.

[–] huwdj 9 years ago

I suspect Jennifer O'Neill was handicapped by the director shoehorning her in to his female archetype. I mean her next film was Summer of 42 and, as I remember, she was perfect in that.