The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas

The idea of staging a musical about the goings on in a whorehouse has got to have potential and perhaps the Broadway play by Larry King and Peter Masterson about a famous real-life brothel named the Chicken Ranch kicked some ass but this film version with Dolly Parton as the madam and Burt Reynolds as town sheriff and her paramour and is so sanitized as to barely register on the arousal scale (the most erotic moment is a dressing room number by the very gay-looking local football team).

Parton is poured into hour-glass outfits that thrust her chest forward but she’s as sexy as a basted turkey. Charles Durning lends some humour to the proceedings as the singin’, dancin’ Governor but Dom De Luise is completely wet as a hypocritical crusading TV personality and the already uninspired (well with the exception of Parton’s “I Will Always Love You" which had already been a No, I country song for her and would become a monster hit in 1992 for Whitey Houston thanks to The Bodyguard) songs and choreography are further dragged down by the typically ‘80s blandness of the production.

It's hard to imagine anyone finding much to admire here and that the film was commercially very successful in its day is yet another indication that the 1980s represented the low-point of 20th century taste.

FYI: For a dose of reality check out Nick Broomfield's 1982 documentary Chicken Ranch.

 

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