Top 10 Best Comedy Western Movies

Most Westerns ride hard on grit, glory, and gunpowder. A lone cowboy with a squint sharp enough to cut glass stares down evil while chewing scenery and spitting one-liners. It's all tumbleweeds, ten-gallon hats, and testosterone. Then someone thought, "What if the cowboy also tripped over his own spurs?" Comedy Westerns were born.

These movies still have your standoffs and your saloons, but now the bar fights end with a piano crashing down and someone accidentally roping themselves to a chicken. They take the grizzled world of the Old West and slap it upside the head with a rubber chicken. You still get your chases, your shootouts, and your deserts stretching to the horizon. You also get jokes that hit faster than a bullet and gags that could make a cactus giggle.

Some of these flicks play it straight until the punchline hits you out of nowhere. Others are full-blown bonkers from the first yeehaw. Either way, they give you the best of both worlds: action with a side of absurdity.

So here's your chance to rustle up the funniest Westerns ever to saddle a horse.

1. Blazing Saddles

   

   Blazing Saddles is a 1974 American comedy Western film directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Cleavon Little as "Bart" and Gene Wilder as "Jim," this is a satirical take on the Western genre in which Bart becomes the first Black sheriff of Rock Ridge, a frontier town about to be destroyed to make way for a new railroad.

   Initially, the people of Rock Ridge harbor a racial bias toward their new leader. However, they warm to him after realizing that Bart and his perpetually drunk gunfighter friend Jim are their only defense against a wave of thugs sent to rid the town of its population.

2. Rango

   

   Rango is a parody of Spaghetti Westerns that partly spoofs the 1966 Western "Django." The hero of the film is a chameleon (Johnny Depp) who has lived as a sheltered family pet and finds himself in the grip of an identity crisis.

   Rango wonders how to stand out when it is his nature to blend in. When he accidentally winds up in a frontier town called Dirt, he takes the first step on a transformational journey as the town's new sheriff. Though at first Rango only role-plays, a series of thrilling situations and outrageous encounters forces him to become a real hero.

3. Three Amigos!

   

   Three cowboy movie stars, played by Chevy Chase, Steve Martin, and Martin Short, are fired when one of their movies bombs. In what seems to be a career-saving offer, a young Mexican woman offers them a high-paying gig in her village.

   The three jump at the opportunity, expecting to do their typical act, but the young woman believes they are really heroes and asks them to rid her village of the bad guy El Guapo.

4. Maverick

   

   Maverick (1994) is a Western comedy film based on the 1950s television series of the same name, created by Roy Huggins. The film stars Mel Gibson as gambler Bret Maverick, who is on his way to a major five-card draw poker tournament being held on the paddle steamer "Lauren Belle."

   Maverick wants to prove he is the best card player of his time. Short $3,000 of the $25,000 tournament entry fee, Maverick travels to the town of Crystal River, intending to collect on debts and win money at card games.

5. Back to the Future Part III

   

6. A Million Ways to Die in the West

   

   A Million Ways to Die in the West is a 2014 comedy Western starring Seth MacFarlane, who plays a mild-mannered sheep farmer, Albert Stark, who feels certain that the Western frontier is trying to kill him. He loses his girlfriend, Louise (Amanda Seyfried), to the town's most successful businessman.

   Then a beautiful, pistol-packing woman named Anna (Charlize Theron) arrives in town and helps Albert find his inner courage.

7. My Name Is Nobody

   

   My Name is Nobody is a comedy Western starring Terence Hill as Nobody and Henry Fonda as Jack Beauregard. Beauregard is a gunslinger who wants to go to Europe to lead a happy life and retire.

   Nobody, who is impressed by his fighting skills, encourages him to fight a gang comprising 150 men single-handedly and become a legend in the process.

8. Shanghai Noon

   

9. They Call Me Trinity

   

   Terence Hill plays a lazy, unorthodox gunfighter, and Bud Spencer plays his portly, horse-thieving brother. The two defend a Mormon settlement from a land-grabbing mayor, a Mexican bandit, and their henchmen.

10. Trinity Is Still My Name

    

    The sequel to "They Call Me Trinity" in which the two incompetent brothers fail in their attempts to honor their father's last wish that they become famous outlaws.

The Newcomers
11. ?

    The Paleface

    
12. ?

    The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again

    
The Contenders

13. Troublemakers

    

    Travis (Terence Hill) and Moses (Bud Spencer) are two brothers who have been at odds with each other for years. In a last-ditch effort to reconcile the two, their mother invites them to spend Christmas with her.

14. Wild Wild West

    

    Wild Wild West is a comedy Western film starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline. President Ulysses S. Grant (Kevin Kline) learns that diabolical inventor Dr. Arliss Loveless is planning to assassinate him, so he orders Civil War hero James West (Will Smith) and U.S. Marshal Artemus Gordon (also Kline) to arrest him.

    The two's personalities don't mesh well together at all, but they still have to try to work together.

15. The Apple Dumpling Gang

    

16. Waterhole No. 3

    

    Waterhole #3 is a 1967 Western comedy film considered to be a comic remake of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Cavalry soldiers led by Sgt. Henry Foggers (Claude Akins) steal a shipment of gold bullion and bury it at a desert waterhole near the Wild West town of Integrity.

    When slick gambler Lewton Cole (James Coburn) catches wind of the booty, he schemes to collect it for himself, setting off an escalating series of double-crosses involving other townsfolk.

17. The Shakiest Gun in the West

    

    The Shakiest Gun in the West is a 1968 comedy Western starring Don Knotts, who plays Jesse W. Haywood, a Philadelphia-based dentist who moves out west to set up his dentist business. He soon meets a pretty bandit named Penelope (Barbara Rhoades) who he helps investigate an Indian gun-smuggling business in return for her freedom.

    But when the two are attacked by the Indians, Penelope shoots some of them dead while Jesse assumes his errant gunfire was responsible.

18. Paint Your Wagon

    

19. Cat Ballou