Evil Roy Slade

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Y'know, many legends have come out of the Old West. Some true, some false, some plain cockamamie...
Like the famous tale of a stagecoach that was burned to the ground by Apaches, and the only survivor was a tiny infant and his little teddy bear...
Now, many times, Indians have found little babies and brought it up as their own...
And then are stories of wolves finding a child and raising it in the wolf pack...
But nobody wanted this baby. Nobody loved him. So this little baby grew up loving nobody. And he became the meanest man in the whole West: Evil Roy Slade.

Evil Roy Slade is a 1972 made-for-television Western/Comedy film. It's something of a Cult Classic, being only shown on TV for decades until its release on DVD. You can also see the movie in its entirety at YouTube. Here is Part 1.

It tells the story of the eponymous outlaw, Evil Roy Slade (John Astin in one of his best performances), who gets a lot of enjoyment robbing everyone in town and killing people just for pleasure. And this was all because he was abandoned as an infant and left to fend for himself in the wild after an attack from Indians. His lawless life suddenly begins to change when he falls for a beautiful schoolteacher named Betsy Potter. By that time, Slade begins to question his position as being a no-good rotten outlaw. To make matters worse, he is also the intended target of Nelson L. Stoole, a railroad tycoon, and his Dumb Muscle nephew, Clifford, as revenge for Slade robbing him previous times. Also wanting to turn in Slade is a retired former marshal by the name of Bing Bell.

Evil Roy Slade is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Evil Roy Slade include:
  • Admiring the Abomination: When Roy is arrested and sentenced to hanging, he watches the construction of the scaffold and the selling of Evil Roy Slade Hanging Dolls with considerable amusement. He's also impressed by the reach of Nelson P. Stoole's business interests:

Evil Roy Slade: (admiringly) He's got that stubby index finger in a lot of pies.

Evil Roy Slade: I worked a lot of hard years to get to the bottom!

Is that the door?

  • Raised by Natives and Raised by Wolves: Both averted, as Slade actually grew up fending for himself.
  • Running Gag:
    • A character asking if anyone is at the door every time Bing Bell's name is mentioned.
    • Bing Bell burning up Nelson's letters.
    • Several references to Nelson's stubby index finger.

Men often sit around the campfire and sing about it!