Cat Ballou

Cat Ballou (1965) is an American comedy Western you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Elliot Silverstein and starring Jane Fonda alongside Lee Marvin in a dual role.

Schoolteacher Catherine Ballou comes home to her father's ranch only to find hired killers closing in. After his murder she hunts down Kid Shelleen, the deadliest gunfighter in the West — and finds a drunk who can barely stay on his horse. Marvin also plays the silver-nosed assassin sent to finish the job, and the contrast between those two characters is the film's best gag. That performance landed him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

For a 1965 Western, the film is surprisingly sharp in its send-up of frontier heroics: nobody behaves the way the genre demands, and that is precisely the joke. Stream Cat Ballou online on iFILM.