Cat Ballou 1965Although Cat Ballou was categorized as a Western (a Western comedy to be exact), the film was actually a pastiche of popular Western themes. Screenwriters Walter Newman and Frank R. Pierson and film director Elliot Silverstein took familiar motifs such as shootouts, train robberies, posses in pursuit, and frontier romance and exaggerated them, twisted them, and turned them inside out ending up with Cat Ballou. Instead of a strong, fearless, sharpshooter, Cat Ballou's hero is Kid Shelleen (Marvin), an aging drunkard who sits atop an equally drunk horse.
In the title role, Jane Fonda gives a lively but amusing performance as a young woman who returns home to her Wyoming town only to discover that the Wolf City Development Company has been trying to force her father Frankie (John Marley) off his ranch. Cat enlists the help of legendary gunfighter Kid Shelleen to help defend her father from silver-nosed hired gun Tim Strawn (also played by Marvin). Her father is ultimately killed and Cat, with the help of her posse, vows to avenge her father's death.

Director: Elliot Silverstein
Cast: Jane Fonda, Lee Marvin, Michael Callan, Nat 'King' Cole
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy, Romance, Western

BD50 | 1080p AVC | 01:36:03 | 39.2 Gb + 3% rec
Language: English
Subtitles: English

Extras:

Audio Commentaries:
-- Michael Callan and Dwayne Hickman
-- Eddy Friedfeld, Lee Pfeiffer, and Paul Scrabo

Isolated Score Track is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

Lee and Pamela: A Romance (1080i; 34:08) is an original piece documenting the relationship between Lee Marvin and his wife Pamela.

The Legend of Cat Ballou (480i; 12:36) is an archival piece with some fairly ragged looking video anomalies.

Original Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 3:30) is interesting in that it emphasizes the "new hit" The Ballad of Cat Ballou, though the typically authoritative Joel Whitburn's Billboard books don't show a single was ever released. Along this same track, it doesn't even look like an official soundtrack album ever came out, though a posthumous Nat King Cole album was released featuring tunes from the film as well as other movie themes Nat helped to popularize.