Hang 'Em High (1968)

User Rating:

6.9/10   

Director:

Ted Post

Writers:

Leonard Freeman (written by) and
Mel Goldberg (written by)

Release Date:

3 August 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Western

Tagline:

The hanging was the best show in town. But they made two mistakes. They hung the wrong man and they didn't finish the job.

Plot:

When an innocent man barely survives a lynching, he returns as a lawman determined to bring the vigilantes to justice.

Plot Keywords:

Judge | Marshal | Rustling | Justice | Murder

Cast

Clint Eastwood	...	Marshal Jed Cooper
Inger Stevens	...	Rachel Warren
Ed Begley	...	Captain Wilson, Cooper Hanging Party
Pat Hingle	...	Judge Fenton
Ben Johnson	...	Marshal Dave Bliss
Charles McGraw	...	Sheriff Ray Calhoun, Red Creek
Ruth White	...	Madame 'Peaches' Sophie
Bruce Dern	...	Miller, One of the 3 rustlers, and murderer
Alan Hale Jr.	...	Matt Stone, Cooper Hanging Party
Arlene Golonka	...	Jennifer, the Prostitute
James Westerfield	...	Prisoner
Dennis Hopper	...	The Prophet
L.Q. Jones	...	Loomis, Cooper Hanging Party
Michael O'Sullivan	...	Francis Elroy Duffy, Prisoner
Joseph Sirola	...	Reno, Cooper Hanging Party

Runtime:

114 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Iceland:16 | Spain:18 | UK:X (original rating) | USA:Approved (certificate #21776) | Australia:M | Finland:K-16 | Norway:16 | South Korea:15 | Sweden:15 | UK:18 | USA:M (original rating) | USA:PG-13 (re-rating) (1997) | West Germany:16

Filming Locations:

Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA

Company:

Leonard Freeman Production

Trivia:

CASTLE THUNDER: Heard several times during the rain after Jed and Rachel's picnic.

Goofs:

Continuity: The length of Miller's beard seems to vary considerably from shot-to-shot, especially during his fist-fight seen with Cooper on their way back to Fort Grant. He appears nearly clean-shaven, but once on the ground, his beard is quite heavy. In contrast, Cooper's facial hair never changes.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Captain Wilson, Cooper Hanging Party: Alright, drop your gunbelt.
Jed Cooper: What is this all about?
Loomis, Cooper Hanging Party: The captain said to drop your gunbelt.
Captain Wilson, Cooper Hanging Party: Now.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Shanghai Noon (2000)

Clint Eastwood: Now a Man with a Name!

The film begins brilliantly and brutally with a lynch mob leaving Eastwood for dead at the end of a rope...

He is rescued, eventually cleared of suspicion, and appointed deputy with 'a license to hunt' by a famous hanging-Judge Parker (Pat Hingle) with a clear warning: All the criminals are to be taken alive for trial...

Eastwood proceeds to clean up the worst crimes in the state, but doubting his own motives, he always avoids capturing the gang of nine vigilantes who were responsible for his near-death...

Inexorably, the confrontation comes nearer. The leader of the gang, Captain Wilson (played by Ed Begley), returns to town and wounds Eastwood. This provides an encounter with another victim of the vigilantes, Rachel (Inger Stevens) who nurses Eastwood and reveals that the same gang raped her after murdering her husband...

Eastwood's character is unlike Gregory Peck's character as the blind seeker of justice in "The Bravados" (1958), and much different for the 'Stranger.' He has now more dialog, he has a romance of sorts, and although he is equally proficient with the gun he always waited for the court's justice rather than dispensing his own, as he readily did in the Italian Westerns. He also exhibits less of the dry humor that had characterized the Stranger, and most sacrilegious of all, he has a name, Jed Cooper.

"Hang 'em High" remains a study of differences between public and private forms of justice, but the motivations behind both are left confused and unsatisfying... The gripping mass execution on a big platform, is brilliantly directed by Ted Post, but the film has neither the magic or the mystique of a Leone film...