The Hallelujah Trail *** (1965, Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Brian Keith, Jim Hutton, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau, Pamela Tiffin) – Classic Movie Review 6523

Producer-director John Sturges’s good-looking, robust 1965 Western stars Burt Lancaster as Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart, who is assigned to protect a valuable shipment of whisky en route to the thirsty miners in Denver.

Native Americans, the US Cavalry and Cora Massingale (Lee Remick)’s Temperance League ladies (with their slogan ‘refuse booze’) are among those who try to stop the shipment from getting to its destination.

Sturges’s movie is a well-acted and amiable, if slightly clumsy and overlong comedy Western, entertaining overall but running an unnecessary 165 minutes. The performances are decent if not exceptional, with the heavy-weight Lancaster not over-comfortable with the comedic tone. ‘See How The West Was Fun!’, they advertised, but it wasn’t really, was it?

It is handsomely filmed in Technicolor by Robert Surtees for the huge Cinerama cinema screen, so there is a visual problem with the scaled-down images on home viewing.

Also in the cast are Brian Keith, Jim Hutton, Donald Pleasence, Martin Landau as Chief Walks-Stooped-Over, Pamela Tiffin, John Anderson, Tom Stern, Robert J Wilke as Chief Five Barrels, Dub Taylor, Whit Bissell, Helen Kleeb and Noam Pitlik. What about the casting of Landau and Wilke as Native Americans?

It is written by John Gay, based on the novel by Bill [William] Gulick, and scored by Elmer Bernstein.

The cut version runs 134 minutes, with the TCM print at 156 minutes and the Cinemax version at 146 minutes.

It cost a lot – $7 million – and took relatively little – $4 million in the US.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Classic Movie Review 6523

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