'Great Scout' a big bore

By Wilma Salisbury

"The Great Scout and Cathouse Thursday" spends 110 minutes revving its motor, spinning its wheels and making a huge fuss. But it's a would-be comedy and never goes anywhere.

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-Set during the 1908 presidential campaign, the mindless movie chronicles the ridiculous escapades of a tough old frontier scout and his drunken halfbreed cohort as they try to recoup the $60,000 they had been robbed of years ago by their former gold-mining partner, now a rich politician.

Their lust for money takes the two broken-down clowns through various kidnapping episodes, fist fights, saloon shows, Indian tricks, wild chases and whorehouse scrambles.

The movie's frenzied action scenes, however, do nothing to accelerate its slow overall pace. Nor do heavy doses of bawdy

jokes and slapstick humor make up for its woeful absence of plot development, characterization, direction and style.

Wasting their talents in this boring nonsense are Lee Marvin as the leathery Great Scout, Oliver Reed as his mock-savage friend, aş Strother Martin as their lecherous buddy, Kay Lenz as the wild Cathouse Thursday, Robert Culp as the slick politician, Elizabeth Ashley as his foul-mouthed wife and Sylvia Miles as a Lesbian madame.