While the audience watches a black and white horse opera, a narrator's voice wonders what such a movie would be like today. Rex O'Herlihan, The Singing Cowboy, finds himself in color and enters a cliché-ridden town, in which the evil cattle baron (Andy Griffith) and the new Italian cowboys (who always wear raincoats no matter how hot it gets) join forces to get him and the sheep ranchers to leave the valley.