Hang ’em High **** (1968, Clint Eastwood, Inger Stevens, James MacArthur, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Charles McGraw, Ben Johnson, L Q Jones, Bruce Dern, Alan Hale Jr, Dennis Hopper) – Classic Movie Review 3174

When Clint Eastwood returned to the US from Europe, after starring in three Sergio Leone Spaghetti Westerns, he was directed in Hang ’em High by Ted Post, who was a vital factor in making Eastwood a Hollywood superstar. Post provides America’s answer to the Spaghetti Western in this moody, exciting and cynical 1968 movie with Eastwood playing Jed Cooper, an innocent supposed rustler and killer who barely survives a lynching but becomes a US Marshal to track down and kill the nine vigilantes who lynched him and left him to die.

In 1959 Eastwood, after bit parts in 11 films, moved to CBS TV for his first leading role, as the amiable, fresh-faced sidekick Rowdy Yates, in the TV Western series Rawhide, where he first worked with Post, who crafts Hang ’em High tautly and excitingly, giving it the authentic-looking touch of Dollars trilogy director Sergio Leone.

Produced by Eastwood’s Malpaso company, it is also a key film in creating his legend. Eastwood’s Man With No Name persona from the Spaghetti Westerns is here refined into a more obviously heroic character without any loss of fascination, developing and consolidating Eastwood’s screen persona as the impassive, laconic, gun-for-hire loner.

Hang ’em High is a most satisfying Western, whose power and enjoyment are much enhanced by the great turns from a commendable bunch of the venerable character players of the era, among them Ed Begley as Captain Wilson, Pat Hingle as Judge Fenton, Charles McGraw as Sheriff Ray Calhoun, Ben Johnson as Marshal Dave Bliss, L Q Jones, Bruce Dern, Alan Hale Jr, Dennis Hopper and Bob Steele.

It co-stars Inger Stevens, James MacArthur, Arlene Golonka and Ruth White. The screenplay is by Leonard Freeman and Mel Goldberg, cinematography by Leonard South and Richard Kline and the score is by Dominic Frontière.

Post directed Eastwood again in Magnum Force (1973), the first Dirty Harry sequel, which outdid Don Siegel’s original film commercially.

Ted Post died on August 20 2013, aged 95. Eastwood has said that Post, Leone and Siegel were the three most influential directors in his career.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3174

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