YMMV / McLintock!

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• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Chief Puma, for his nuanced, Fair for Its Day portrayal.
  • Local Soiled Dove Camille has less than half-a-dozen short scenes, but is well-liked due to her humorous, subtly flamboyant performance and how it was the last film her actress made before being diagnosed with cancer.
  • Ben Sage's sister Beth is an uncredited character with very little screen-time, but made enough of an impression that there was once a filmboards.com thread trying to figure out who played her.
• Fair for Its Day: Despite committing what would be seen today as blunders in its treatment of Native Americans — casting Latino and otherwise non-Native actors for major parts, and having the Comanches perform a drum circle and speak a greeting in Navajo — the film goes out of its way to advocate for antiracism to its Native characters and portray them as dignified individuals unfairly treated by Obstructive Bureaucrats in Washington. Not bad for a Western in the early 1960s. Apparently these plot elements were included at John Wayne's personal insistence.
• Harsher in Hindsight: After Becky expresses concern that Devlin might die after her father supposedly shoots him, G. W. says, "If he does, he'll be the first man ever killed with a blank cartridge." In 1984, actor Jon-Erik Hexum died after discharging a pistol loaded with a blank cartridge against his own temple in a misguided prank.
• Signature Scene:
  • The scene at the mud pit, culminating in the big brawl.
  • Katherine's spanking scene, featured prominently in all the promotional artwork.
• Values Dissonance: The scenes where Katherine and Becky get spanked with a coal shovel won't sit well with most viewers, and viewers would cringe even further since GW gives his encouragement and approval for his daughter to get punished that way. It's especially egregious in the case of Katherine. GW barged into her room wanting to talk, she didn't want to talk right then, and he wouldn't go away. As a result, he chases her all over town in full view of everyone while she ends up down to her undergarments, all so he can spank her in front of everyone for not talking to him at that particular moment. Given the fact that it's The Taming of the Shrew in the West, it's not surprising.
• Values Resonance:
  • One of the villains is a bureaucrat who accuses some Native Americans of kidnapping a girl (she just spent a long time with her beau, it turns out) and one of GW's friends almost gets hanged for the trouble. The plotline feels even more resonant in The New '10s, due to concerns like racial profiling, the Black Lives Matter movement, and Police Brutality.
  • McLintock criticizes the paternalistic Obstructive Bureaucrat way that the government manages Native American affairs, which is still controversial in the 2020s.

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