A posse pursue a disfigured, psychotic outlaw as he rapes and murders his way across the state. There's no denying just how cheap and hastily put together this western looks. Obviously an exploitative cash-in the plethora of cynically violent westerns that were served up during the seventies, yet one wonders what reliable professionals such as Breck, Macklin, Carr, and TV's Big Valley director Mazucca ever hoped to salvage from this glaringly half hearted project. At least Breck puts in a shift with some optimistic over acting as the oddly masked villain and his appearances partly justify the reason not to doze off completely through such 'thrilling' scenes as a shoot-out that is only slightly less dramatic than a children's pretend gunfight in a school playground or the endless treks across the same bit of sand by fatigued, demotivated looking actors and horses. Watchable for unintended reasons but I wondered what the death-or-glory hack Al Adamson might have come up with if the tumbleweed had rolled the pages of Joan Gardner's screenplay in his direction.
Review of A Man for Hanging
