Bronco Billy (1980)

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General		Extras
Category	Western	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1980
Running Time	111:38 (Case: 116)
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Sided	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	2,4	Directed By	Clint Eastwood
Studio Distributor	Warner Home Video	Starring	Clint Eastwood Geoffrey Lewis Scatman Crothers Bill McKinney Sam Bottoms Dan Vadis Sierra Pecheur Sondra Locke
Case	Amaray-Transparent
RPI	$34.95	Music	None Given

Video		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	Full Frame	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s) French Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s) Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	1.78:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio	1.85:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Italian Dutch Arabic Spanish Portuguese German Romanian Bulgarian English for the Hearing Impaired Italian for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	Yes
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Bronco Billy is a gently melancholy film. It's about a group of misfits scratching out a living running a Wild West show. It was made in 1980, and there is one thing that locks it into that time (no, I'm not going to tell you, because it would spoil the plot), but apart from that it could be happening today.

    Bronco Billy McCoy (Clint Eastwood) is slightly deranged (I just realised what a dreadful pun that is, given that he is a cowboy without a ranch - sorry 'bout that) - he lives a cowboy ethos that never really existed outside of movies. His companions Doc Lynch (Scatman Crothers), Lefty Lebow (Bill McKinney), Lasso Leo James (Sam Bottoms), Chief Big Eagle (Dan Vadis) and Lorraine Running Water (Sierra Pecheur) are more aware of the real world, but they humour him out of real affection and out of a lack of alternatives. They travel from town to town, putting on their show, and hoping to make enough money to be able to buy a ranch.

    Sondra Locke (yup, this movie comes from that era of Clint's films) plays (or tries to) Antoinette Lily, an heiress who must marry before her thirtieth birthday. She chooses to marry John Arlington (Geoffrey Lewis), but he deserts her on their wedding night. She's left without anything but her nightgown and robe. She runs into Bronco Billy while she's trying to get a dime so she can phone home for money. Through a strange sequence of events she doesn't get in touch, and her greedy step-mother (Beverlee McKinsey) and her lawyer (William Prince) arrange for her to be declared dead. She hates the circumstances she's in, and she takes it out on the people around her. She despises Bronco Billy and his troupe. But her problems go further than that. It is very hard to feel sorry for her, but whether that's because of the character, or Sondra Locke's "acting", is something I can't tell.

    Bronco Billy's car is quite something - it has "six-guns" for door handles. Beautifully appropriate to the character. I also like the fact that when he says grace at an orphanage, he hopes the children will be kept from hard liquor and cigarettes, rather than drugs - he is definitely living in the wrong century.

    There are some amusing elements, such as the continual search for an assistant for Bronco Billy for example. But these moments are counterbalanced by the sadness of their struggles to make ends meet. It's not maudlin, but it gets close. It is quite an interesting study of what happens when a mythic cowboy ethos is confronted with today's realities. It also concerns itself with hope, and dream fulfilment.

    If you are looking for a Clint Eastwood "man with no name" Western movie, you should keep looking. If you are looking for something rather different from Clint Eastwood, then I suggest you consider this one - it is quite a different movie from his usual work.

Video

    This film is presented on a double-sided disc, with a wide-screen version version on one side, and a pan-and-scan version on the other. I watched the wide-screen version, which is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 and is 16x9 enhanced, and sampled the pan-and-scan version (1.33:1, not 16x9 enhanced). The back cover is a tad misleading, in that it claims both sides are 1.85:1, but at least it accurately describes side A as 4x3, and side B as 16x9. This film, unlike the majority of Clint Eastwood's Westerns, was made for an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. There are no obvious framing errors in the minor cropping that takes it to 1.78:1.

    The picture is quite sharp, but there is a lot of light film grain overlaying it. Shadow detail is very good indeed, and there's no low level noise.

    Colour is very good. Beautifully vivid colours, without any over saturation or colour bleed.

    There are some tiny film artefacts, but they are barely visible - the only notable one was the insect at 1:14. There are many instances of aliasing, but they are all small and momentary. There's no moiré artefacting, and no MPEG errors either, but there's some very light background shimmer.

    There are subtitles in ten languages, plus both English and Italian for the Hearing Impaired. I looked at both sets of English subtitles. They are easy to read, accurate, and well-timed.

    The disc is double-sided, single-layer on both sides. That means that there is no layer change, but it also means that there's very little room for extras.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    There are three soundtracks, in English, French, and Italian. I only listened to the English. It's Dolby Digital 2.0, surround encoded.

    The dialogue is clear and comprehensible, even with the assortment of American accents. There are no audio sync issues.

    The score is basically a sequence of country and Western songs. They're well suited to the film, with their melancholy tones.

    The subwoofer gets nothing to do, and the surrounds are not used for any directional sound, they provide a little depth to the sound, that is all.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras. The back cover claims Interactive Menus and Scene Access as special features - hmm.

Menu

    The main menu is static, with some theme music behind it.

    The Region 1 version of this disc is dual ratio, too. I have found two sources, one of which claims the R1 is 16x9 enhanced, the other claims it is not. If it is 16x9 enhanced, then there's nothing between the two. If it is not 16x9 enhanced, then the choice is easy: get the R4.

    Perhaps you are better off getting the R4 disc, because at least you know what you are getting.

    A gentle film, presented rather well on DVD.

    The video is rather good.

    The audio is quite good.

    The extras are missing.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall