Joe Bob Briggs

Let's face it. What's the No. 1 reason for bar fights in America?
It's the following words: "What are you looking at?"
And we know what he's looking at, right?
He's looking at a female.
And the female is with a guy.

And any other guy who looks at, talks to, touches or pays attention to this woman is likely to get his face mashed in, right?

It doesn't matter if she's ugly. It doesn't matter if she's married or single. It doesn't matter if she's dancing nekkid on the bar.

There's always some weenie with a bad beard and a big belt buckle hangin' around, ready to smash an Old Milwaukee over your cranium if you acknowledge that this woman exists.

Now what's going on here? It wasn't always this way. There was a time when you could go to a bar with one woman, dance with 50 other women while she was dancing with 50 other men, then head for Denny's at 2 a.m. to trade stories about helmet-haired blondes in halter tops and snakeskin boot-scooters with fuzz in their ears.

When I was going out with Wanda Bodine, she used to say, "And then Jimbo hit on me, and then Lonnie hit on me, and then Bo followed me around like a puppy dog," and I would just sit there munching my hash browns and spearing pickles off her Fiesta Mexicana Plate. I guess today I'd be considered a total wimp.

But I always looked at it this way:
I want guys to hit on my woman. If she's gonna run away with one of 'em, I want her to do it now. I don't wanna find out seven years down the road that she'd rather be out in the parking lot with Hugh Grant.

And if you walk up to some guy's girlfriend and she starts wrapping her legs around your waist and sticking her tongue in your ear, I don't wanna fight.

I wanna go find the guy and tell him to run for his life. Why are we all out there beatin' the bejabbers out of one another when all we really have to do is line these gals up against the wall and say: "Okay, choose! Right now! Choose one and one only!"

They're doing all the choosing anyway, right? Let 'em leave with whoever they wanna leave with, guys. And those of us who are left over can do the old boogie-till-you-puke bonding thing.

Believe me, by 9 in the morning, we're gonna feel much better than they do anyhow. You know what I'm saying here?

Speaking of women who could start riots in a convent, Kelly LeBrock is back and she's strapping on a holster over her black boostie-ay in Hard Bounty, the first erotic spaghetti western.

Unfortunately, Kelly is the first Wild West bordello madam who has sex with her clothes on.

Fortunately, the flick is directed by Jim "Remove Your Tops Please, Ladies" Wynorski, who rounds up the usual array of enormously-talented bimbettes for your aardvarking pleasure.

Jimbo is trying to do a cross between Bad Girls, The Unforgiven, High Plains Drifter and Gas Pump Girls--and it works for me.

Matt McCoy is the Eastwood-type bounty hunter who likes to make the sign of the knock-kneed woolly walrus with Kelly LeBrock when he's hanging around the dusty little town of No Trees.

John Terlesky is the quick-trigger enforcer for the evil mining company who massacred some women and children while he was a Texas Ranger and framed his partner McCoy for the dirty deed. (A little too much plot getting in the way of the story.)

And, most important of all, Felicity Waterman, Kimberly Kelley and Rochelle Swanson are the bodacious cat-fighting good-time girls who batter the bedsprings upstairs at the saloon.

The gunfights are fairly tame stuff, but the sociological study of what two bucks could buy you in the 1870s is truly illuminating, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Thirty-four dead bodies. Ten breasts. Twelve shootouts.
One catfight. Multiple aardvarking.
Drive-In Academy Award nominations for...

*John Terlesky, as the geezer-killing enforcer, for saying, "Mr. Bartel was disappointed to find out you turned down his offer."

*Matt McCoy, doing a Clint thang, for saying, "Got a lot of parts on me, ain't working like they used to."

*Ross Hagen, as the sheriff, for having the guts to actually say, "This is a quiet town, and we'd like to keep it that way."

*Kelly LeBrock, as the British-accented, pistol-toting madam who comforts troubled hookers with lines like, "Honey, it ain't about you," and says, "If you're gonna treat me like a whore, you're gonna pay me like a whore."

*Rochelle Swanson, as the hooker with two enormous talents.
*And Felicity Waterman, as the kleptomaniac lovelorn hooker who dreams of marriage.

Two and a half stars.
Joe Bob says check it out.

Dear Mr. Briggs:
I've finished reading your comments about the Ku Klux Klan. Good for you! Finally someone willing to speak the God's-honest truth about that bunch of society's misfits!

After living in Georgia for the last five years, I've seen and been told an awful lot about the Klan, but as you wrote, they are tiny and they grow only when attention is called to them.