I saw this film last nght. They're running it on the westernchannel this month, I've seen it twice already. But you gotta be pateint. Pollard was excellent. He should have won an oscar. Don't mis it.

Dirty Little Billy (1972)
May 19, 1973
Film: 'Dirty Little Billy':Legend of Gunslinging Kid Explored in Film The Cast
A. H. WEILER
Published: May 19, 1973

Credit the team headed by Stan Dragoti, the television commercials director who is making his movie bow with "Dirty Little Billy," with giving us a realistically raw view of the beginnings of the Billy the Kid legend. Unfortunately, Billy, floundering in a search for roots in sleazy, muddy Coffeyville, Kan., and the vicious or callous unwashed types he's involved with remain largely vague, unresolved figures brawling and killing on a primitive landscape.

Billy, who is portrayed by Michael J. Pollard in smiling, almost witless fashion, revolts against the hard farm life forced on him by his stepfather. Thereafter he's befriended by the town badman, Richard Evans. Lee Purcell, as Evans's prostitute girlfriend, initiates Billy into one aspect of manhood. Eventually, Coffeyville's puritanical element, led by Charles Aidman — who, for unexplained reasons, is dallying with Billy's mother—drives Billy and his pal out of town after gunning down the hapless Miss Purcell.

Our callow hero, once inept with guns, uses them with bloody effect to protect his friend in a final shootout with a gang of thieving renegades. And, one may assume, Billy the Dessperado now emerges full-blown as he happily packs his six-shooters and trudges off into the sunset with his mentor.

The look of an authentic period and place is captured in the dirt, sloppy roads, rickety buildings and tattered itinerants who never owned fancy 10-gallon hats, spurs or chaps. And the unremitting struggle for survival is also starkly spotlighted, especially in a couple of brutal fights staged without glorification of the principals.

"Dirty Little Billy" projects an unvarnished picture of the Old West, even if the contributions of the script and the dour Charles Aidman, the misused Lee Purcell and the rough Richard Evans are unconvincing. And one is inclined to agree with a confused Billy when he asks, "What's all this rushing about for?"


The Cast
DIRTY LITTLE BILLY, directed by Stan Dragoti; story and screenplay by Charles Moss and Mr. Dragoti; director of photography, Ralph Woolsey; film editor, Dava Wages; produced by Jack L. Warner; released by Columbia Pictures. At the Columbia I Theater, Second Avenue at 64th Street; the Forum Theater, Broadway at 46th Street, and neighborhood theaters. Running time: 93 minutes. This film is classified R.
Billy Bonney . . . . . Michael J. Pollard
Berle . . . . . Lee Purcell
Goldie Evans . . . . . Richard Evans
Ben Antrim . . . . . Charles Aidman
Catherine MaCarty . . . . . Dran Hamilton
Henry MaCarty . . . . . Willard Sage
Jawbone . . . . . Josip Elic