"You better stick to singing," Sammy Jackson, one of the two male leads of The Fastest Guitar Alive tells his partner. "I don't think you've got much future as a spy." It turned out that hardly anybody connected with this movie had much of a future except for Jackson's sidekick--Roy Orbison, who, as it turned out, did stick to singing. The movie, which coincided with the start of a long career slump for the most beautifully masochistic of white rock crooners, was Roy's one fling at movie acting. In this Civil War-era Western, he plays the performing half of a team of snake oil salesman and saloon entertainers who ride from town to town hauling a wagon full of dancing girls. Sammy pitches his miracle elixir and serves as manager to Roy, who hits the stage at the local watering hole and sings the songs written specially for the movie, such as the Marty Robbins knockoff "Pistolero", the Ren-and-Stimpyesque "Happy Party Time" ("Have a good time party,dance the night away/ Have a good time party,it's time to laugh and play") , and "Snuggle Huggle" (" I want to be as snuggle as a buggle in a ruggle/ When my sweety does the snuggle huggle with me"), which was deemed to hot for inclusion on the soundtrack album. This serves as their cover while they go about trying to break into the U.S. mint to steal gold to help fund the Confederate state. The title itself refers to Roy's special guitar, which is also a secret weapon; when he plucks a particular string, a long, thin gun barrell slowly emerges from the side--an image whose unintentionally hilarious phallic overtones are not helped by the funny sound effect that accompanies it. Shooting an interloper's hat off just to get his attention, Roy warns him, "If you're interested, I could kill you with this, and play your funeral march at the same time."
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