Dirty Little Billy is not a movie I talk about because I want to, but because I feel that if this post can help even one person to not do drugs, then it’s worth the time thinking about it. You see, I do it because I care. I care about the viewer who doesn’t know, I care about Billy the Kid, and I care about the old west. And that’s why I write this post.
This is probably my least favorite western I’ve ever seen; there’s problems all over the place. The lighting is bad, the characters are bad, and it prides itself on being a true look at Billy the Kid. Not to mention simple logistical items that seem ridiculous.
Let’s start with the logistical. In the revisionist era of westerns it became important to show how dirty everything was. Nobody ever swept. Nobody ever dusted. And according to a lot of these movies, people who lived in the 1800’s seemed to think that splattered mud was an attractive look. Dirty Little Billy supports this notion by having Billy and his family arrive in town and proceed to walk straight up a mud sloshed road, going in up to their knees, when they could have easily moved left by about six feet and walked on solid dirt. Clearly the director had them do this for effect, but it was extremely silly watching them struggle through the mud, making a point of getting dirty, when anyone with half a brain would not even alter their course, but begin it on the sensible path.
Almost any scene shot indoors is a challenge to discern. I understand there wasn’t electricity at the time, but if you overcame that by using a modern camera to shoot the film, then you could probably also do the same to find away to allow us to see the indoor scene clearly. I’m not certain, but I’d be willing to wager that this was another effort by the director to show just how dark and dismal the west was, on top of being a mud-hewn mess.
Other than a simpleton named for William Bonney there weren’t really any characters tied to the true life of Billy the Kid. He hero-worships a fella named Goldie and then the story spirals down from there. Since this Billy is so far from the actual Billy the Kid, you could watch it and just consider the name a coincidence, but it still isn’t worth the time. Michael Pollard, who plays Billy in this movie, is a fine actor in a lot of roles (he was great in Roxanne) but he ends up playing the Kid as a half-brained nit wit. If this Billy the Kid was in your high school you automatically know that he would be in the special class, bordering on hanging out with the full on mentally handicapped students. It may sound like a facetious joke, but this a sincere effort to give context. It was bad.
From the movies promotional efforts: A more realistic, based-on-reality, unsensationalistic portrayal of the gritty early years of one of the most famous Wild West outlaws in history, Billy The Kid. They’re very wrong.
Handy With A Gun...! 