HANG 'EM HIGH (1968) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Ted Post
Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, Pat Hingle,
Ed Begley, Ben Johnson, Charles McGraw,
Bruce Dern, Alan Hale Jr., L.Q.Jones,
Dennis Hopper, James MacArthur, Bob Steele
A lone cowboy herding some steers across a shallow stream gets ambushed by vigilantes who accuse him of rustling and hang him. They make three mistakes. The man's innocent. He survives. And he's played by Clint Eastwood. Clint's first post-spaghetti western takes on some interesting questions about revenge and frontier justice, leaving the answers mostly unresolved. Inger Stevens plays a widow with a crippling obsession of her own. Pat Hingle plays a ruthless judge, and all kinds of familiar faces turn up in the supporting cast. Curiously, the scene that gets the most attention and screen time is one that Clint's barely in, a circus-like six-man hanging. The whole town turns out, hymns are sung, vendors hawk cold beer, and not all the men on the gallows deserve to be there. It leaves you with something to think about.
