Hang 'Em High (1968) - Post and Eastwood cook spaghetti in the West

♥♥

 

Sex, suspense and macho violence is promised on this colorful poster for Ted Post's Hang 'Em High

Retired lawman Jed Cooper is accused of stealing cattle and is nearly hung dead in a retaliatory lynching. But when his actual past job is known, he is hired for a high wage to forward justice in the Oklahoma Territory of 1889.

 

Hang 'Em High is written  by Leonard Freeman (Gold of the Seven Saints (1961)) and Mel Goldberg (The F.B.I. (1968, TV-series)) and directed by Ted Post (The Peacemaker (1956)).

The (Italian) spaghetti western style is cranked up beyond the tolerable in this wholly American film, an unreal and unexciting first venture for star Clint Eastwood (Sudden Impact (1983)) and Irving Leonard's Malpaso Productions company. Eastwood is not utilized satisfactorily in Post's sub-standard direction. The supporting cast look good on paper, but none of them really distinguish themselves in Hang 'Em High.

The film is also a colorful and large production, a bit overlong, - with a horribly melodramatic, overwrought score (by Dominic Frontiere (Massacre Harbor (1968))). The bottom-line: Hang 'Em High is an overrated near botch-up.

 

Related post:

 

Ted Post: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) - More than decent follow-up to the SF milestone

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 1.6 mil. $

Box office: 10.8 mil. $

= Huge hit (returned 6.75 times its cost)

[Hang 'Em High was released 12 April (Italy) and runs 114 minutes. Eastwood was advised by his agent at the William Morris Agency to follow up his stardom from the Dollars trilogy (A Fistful of Dollars (1964); For a Few Dollars More (1965); and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)) with a co-starring role in J. Lee Thompson's Mackenna's Gold (1969), but Eastwood refused and instead formed his own production company. Eastwood was paid 400k $ and 25 % of the net earnings of the film, which should have raked him in an (at the time) incredible 2.1 mil. $ salary, if 25 % of the North-American earnings alone, or 3.1 mil. $ if for the entire world gross. Shooting took place from June - August 1967 in Arizona, New Mexico and California. The film opened strongly, reportedly besting United Artists' Bond films in opening numbers and making back its costs in just two weeks. It grossed 6.8 mil. $ (63 % of the total gross) in North America. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3/4 star review, translating to 2 notches over this one. Post returned with Peyton Place (1964-69), Bracken's World (1969, TV-series) and theatrically with Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970). Eastwood returned in Coogan's Bluff (1968). Hang 'Em High is fresh at 92 % with a 6.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Hang 'Em High? 

Capote (2005) - The writing of one of the 20th century's finest non-fiction crime novels comes to life

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Biopic of the Year

Gorgeously colored poster for Bennett Miller's Capote

QUICK REVIEW:

In Capote, we follow the New York socialite author Truman Capote's (Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958)) journey to the middle of nowhere, Kansas, and his 4 year long involvement with a quadruple murder case and especially one of the imprisoned murderers, Perry Smith.
Capote is a masterly told crime biopic drama about a very exciting period of a very unusual, American writer's life. Philip Seymour Hoffman (A Most Wanted Man (2014)), - winning his only Oscar for the part, - is perfect in the title lead and gets solid support, especially from Clifton Collins Jr. (Pacific Rim (2013)) as Perry, but also from Oscar-nominated Catherine Keener (Begin Again (2013)) and Chris Cooper (American Beauty (1999)).
Only the somewhat unrefined alternation between cold images and preemptive pathos in the film's beginning seemed less auspicious to me. But a very strong film nonetheless, directed by Bennett Miller (Moneyball (2011)), whose coming film Foxcatcher (2014) is attracting quite a lot of buzz.

 

Related post:

 

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the original trailer here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 49.2 mil. $
= Huge hit
['Sleeper' hit with a long American run (October 2005-April 2006), fueled by outstanding reviews and Oscar-attention; good reception overseas as well, (US box office only accounts for 28.7 mil. $ of the total gross.)]

What do you think of Capote?
Other films of condemned men that you can recommend?

The Bridge/The Spy (1929) - Time-playing fine short debut of Charles Vidor

♥♥♥

In lieu of a picture from the short film, which is rare, here is one of its Hungarian director Charles Vidor

QUICK REVIEW:

The Bridge is a short film based on American writer and critic Ambrose Bierce's famous short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge from 1890. It is about a presumed train-saboteur or spy, who is to be hanged from a bridge, but who flees and sees his family before him, but then feels something tighten around his neck...
SPOILER The whole survival-plot is a subjective fantasy: The man gets executed.
This short experiments with time and is visually stunning if uneven otherwise.
Its director is Hungarian Charles Vidor, who did small writing jobs after it, until he began getting feature directorial gigs, starting with uncredited work on the Boris Karloff-starring The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). He later directed big movies such as Gilda (1946), Hans Christian Andersen (1952) and Love Me or Leave Me (1955).

Related review:

Charles Vidor: A Farewell to Arms (1957) or, Love in Spite!

See 2 minutes of this fine short here, with a new soundtrack

What do you think of The Bridge?
Any comments on Charles Vidor and his films are very welcome