When a TV series fails, let it go, let it go. I'm assuming that "Dusty's Trail" was a short-lived sitcom in 1974 starring Bob Denver and Forrest Tucker, obviously replacing an unavailable Alan Hale, and as produced by Sherwood Schwartz, it ended up being compiled into a laugh trackless 90 minute movie that is short on laugh, absent on plots, and definitely a negative in the area of brain smarts. This makes the "Apple Dumpling Gang" movies look like Charlie Chaplin in comparison, and what was funny in the 1960s on TV obviously wasn't working in the 1970s on TV, and unless you were Disney, didn't work in movies either. Bob Denver, as likable as he is, became two old here to be playing another Gilligan type character, and the fact that he had to return to playing Gilligan after this in several TV movies is a sad twist in a career that I could have taken different routes had he changed the type of roles he was playing.
Of course, there are some lovely young ladies along to provide physical attractiveness to the cast of characters, but they don't have the spark that Dawn Wells and Tina Louise had on Gilligan's Island. Character actress Lynn Wood, a performer I am familiar with from soap operas, is an obvious attempt to bring in a Natalie Schafer like eccentricness, but she is given poor material. With the success of "Blazing Saddles" by Mel Brooks, the need was felt to cash in on that, but what was clever and intelligent in "Blazing Saddles" ends up as forced and ridiculous here.
Of course, there are some lovely young ladies along to provide physical attractiveness to the cast of characters, but they don't have the spark that Dawn Wells and Tina Louise had on Gilligan's Island. Character actress Lynn Wood, a performer I am familiar with from soap operas, is an obvious attempt to bring in a Natalie Schafer like eccentricness, but she is given poor material. With the success of "Blazing Saddles" by Mel Brooks, the need was felt to cash in on that, but what was clever and intelligent in "Blazing Saddles" ends up as forced and ridiculous here.