Will Penny (1968)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Tom Gries

Writer:

Tom Gries (writer)

Release Date:

10 April 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Western

Tagline:

The Brute in Everyman Was Also in Him - And the Love and the Violence

Plot:

Will Penny, an ageing cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or...

Plot Keywords:

Mountain | Ranch | Son | Winter | Squatter

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Charlton Heston	...	Will Penny
Joan Hackett	...	Catherine Allen
Donald Pleasence	...	Preacher Quint
Lee Majors	...	Blue
Bruce Dern	...	Rafe Quint
Ben Johnson	...	Alex (Flat Iron Ranch foreman)
Slim Pickens	...	Ike Walterstein
Clifton James	...	Catron
Anthony Zerbe	...	Dutchy
Roy Jenson	...	Boetius Sullivan
G.D. Spradlin	...	Anse Howard
Quentin Dean	...	Jennie
William Schallert	...	Dr. Fraker
Lydia Clarke	...	Mrs. Fraker
Robert Luster	...	Shem Bodine

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 (cut) (1968) | UK:12 (2003) | UK:A (1967) (cut) | USA:Approved (Certificate #21512) | Sweden:15 | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Bishop, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

Both Eva Marie Saint and Lee Remick turned down the female lead.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: During the fight between Will Penny and the Quint family, one of the brothers throws a knife into Penny's chest. A wire attached to the knife a very obvious.

Quotes:

[Dutchie has been seriously wounded and the nearest doctor in a hundred miles away]
Catron: Best thing you can do for him, pilgrim, is make him rest easy while he waits till the end. Anything he drinks is on the house. And then you can bury him out back and away from the hogs. And it won't cost much. I'll even carve him a nice head marker. Twenty-five dollars sound about right? The ground is kind of hard this time of year... and the diggin' ain't easy.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Ben Johnson: Third Cowboy on the Right (1996)

Soundtrack:

Lonely Rider, The

Superb film.

Will Penny is an absolutely superb film. I find no flaws in it. A story about rough men and hard times, its plot and characters stand on their own merits, not the cowboy setting. The scenery is perfect; the great west during a harsh winter after a long cattle drive. We feel like we are there.

The initial pace of the screenplay is slow and plodding. But this is intentional. It gives us a feel for the dreariness of a common cowboy's bleak life in the late 19th Century. Later the pace picks up.

Charlton Heston is convincing as a tired, aging, wrangler who really doesn't have much to show for his life. Joan Hackett is just plain enough looking to be real but attractive enough to become the love interest. A great actress, she passed away prematurely.

Donald Pleasence and Bruce Dern are frighteningly convincing as a homicidal religious zealot and his psychopathic son. They personify the cults of violent people that occupy the back recesses of society and only come out to work evil on the rest of us. These two are very scary.

Heston and Hackett's love is believable and so is the gun play. Yet there is no gratuitous sex or violence.

Will Penny is well produced and thoroughly entertaining.