The Fastest Guitar Alive, a would-be comedy western, is a Roy Orbison vehicle. Indeed the only reason to watch even a few minutes of The Fastest Guitar Alive is to see what Ray Orbison looked like without his sunglasses.
It’s all supposed to take advantage of Orbison’s popularity, along the lines of an Elvis Presley movie or a Ricky Nelson movie (or Johnny Cash’s Five Minutes to Live). Problem is, Orbison’s mystique was based on the deep emotions embedded in his haunting voice – and there’s none of that in this movie. Orbison performs six songs, but none of his good ones.
What substitutes for a plot is that Orbison, with a gizmo combination guitar-rifle, cavorts around the Old West with a Medicine Show run by Steve (Sammy Jackson) and enriched by a handful of saloon girls.
Jackson, who starred in the television series No Time for Sergeants and the TV movie Li’l Abner, doesn’t bring much to the party. The film begins with a cringe-inducing racist spoof on an Indian chief (the venerable Iron Eyes Cody). Veteran character John Doucette must have wondered what he had stumbled into.
Oddly, this movie seems out of place for 1967. It seems like it would have fit better earlier in the decade (although it would still be bad).