Showdown is a sort of modern-day sex western; it's very outdoorsy, with alot of big sky, rolling hills, and horses — heavy on the horses. All this really does, I'm afraid, is rob the film of any intimacy it might have had on the few occasion when the action is taken indoors. Feisty Sharon Mitchell is the two-fisted Madam of the Bar Nothing Dude Ranch, which is really a whorehouse with a corral, apparently situated in the middle of nowhere. A trio of your typically horny studs (Herschel Savage, Mike Horner, Jamie Gillis) are stranded nearby after their car breaks down; they get a ride to the ranch and predictable sexual hijinks ensue.

Homer's hammy overplaying of a moralisitc nerd is quickly annoying, but on the other hand, his quite literal roll in the hay with Nina Hartley and Gina Carrera is the film's sexual peak. Curiously, Horner uses a condom in this scene. Maybe he was afraid one of the flies would land on his branding iron.

Otherwise, the action never really heats up, except for a few brief moments when Patti Petite, in a one-on-one with Savage, takes matters in head. Sharon Mitchell is asked to do a lot more acting than screwing, and her performance is really as good as most of the stuff to be seen on the prime-time soaps. The plot, however, is much too thin for the amount of talk required. As for the showdown in Showdown, forget it. It's between our Madam and a pesky sheriff, doesn't involve guns, and fails to achieve a climax, so to speak.

The film suffers from no serious technical problems except the lack of a fly swatter on the set.