Sam Whiskey

Sam Whiskey is a 1969 American Western comedy film directed in DeLuxe Color by Arnold Laven and starring Burt Reynolds, Angie Dickinson, Clint Walker and Ossie Davis. "Way ahead of its time," said Reynolds of the film. "I was playing light comedy and nobody cared." Plot Sam Whiskey, an adventurer and rogue in the Old West, is seduced by Laura Breckenridge, a wealthy widow and daughter of a prominent Oklahoma political family, into promising to retrieve $250,000 in gold bars from a riverboat that recently sank in Colorado's Platte River. The gold had been stolen by Laura's late husband, Congressman Phillip Breckenridge, from the Denver Mint during an official visit and replaced with plated lead fakes. Once the mint receives its next inspection, due in one week, it will resume minting coins and discover the theft. Laura offers Sam $20,000 to recover and return the gold before her family name is ruined and she is convicted as an accomplice to her husband's crime. Sam enlists the help of Jedidiah Hooker, a blacksmith, and O. W. Bandy, an Army friend turned inventor, offering them shares of the reward. They locate the sunken riverboat, unaware that they are being watched by Fat Henry Hobson and his gang. The gold is fifteen feet below the river's surface, so Bandy fashions a diving helmet for Sam out of a bucket and bellows, but Fat Henry and his gang capture Jed and Bandy. Thinking they have drowned Sam, who hides in the riverboat's half-submerged smokestack, they recover the gold and prepare to kill their captives, but Sam turns the tables with the help of one of Bandy's homemade machine guns. As Sam and his partners travel to Denver with the gold, they consider absconding to Mexico, but rein in the temptation when Laura rendezvous with them to provide blueprints of the mint. After kidnapping and assuming the identity of government inspector Thorston Bromley, Sam enters the mint and deliberately damages a gold-plated bronze bust of George Washington displayed in the lobby. He then insists on having it repaired and takes it to a local smithy, where Jed makes a mold of the bust and recasts the recovered gold. Again, they are spied on by Fat Henry's gang. While Sam and company bring the new bust to the mint, the gang breaks into the shop and steals the bronze original, mistaking it for the gold one. Sam continues his false inspection of the mint, and Jed and Bandy infiltrate the premises as plumbers and hide when the mint closes at nightfall.