Hurry Sundown * (1967, Michael Caine, Jane Fonda, John Phillip Law, Diahann Carroll, Robert Hooks, Faye Dunaway, Burgess Meredith, George Kennedy, Rex Ingram) – Classic Movie Review 5724

Producer-director Otto Preminger’s well meaning but lurid and clichéd 1967 movie tells the tale of passion and racial discontent in a Georgia town just after the Second World War, as written by Thomas C Ryan and Horton Foote, based on a novel by K D Gilden.

You don’t expect to find Michael Caine as a ruthless Southern landowner stopping at nothing to buy up his cousin’s land, but the rest of the iconic Sixties cast is a fine round-up of the usual suspects.

Caine is certainly very weirdly cast as Henry Warren, in between making two Harry Palmer films, and, arguably, his Southern accent is more persuasive than his performance, or anything else in this pretty dire and wretched film.

Jane Fonda is better cast as Henry Warren’s flirtatious young wife Julie Ann, and two other actors stand out. John Phillip Law plays Henry’s World War Two combat veteran cousin Rad McDowell and Robert Hooks plays Reeve Scott, a young African American, both of whom own plots of land vital to Henry, and form a bond against him.

Nevertheless, for all its faults, now it seems worth a look for the cast, who also include Rex Ingram, Diahann Carroll, Burgess Meredith, Faye Dunaway, Beah Richards, George Kennedy as Sheriff Coombs, Madeleine Sherwood, Frank Converse, Loring Smith, Luke Askew, Donna Danton, Frank Converse, William Elder and Jim Backus, plus the film critic Rex Reed playing a farmer. Reed used his time well during filming, interviewing Preminger and the cast.

It is shot in widescreen and Technicolor by Loyal Griggs and Milton Krasner, and scored by Hugo Montenegro.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5724

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com