Movie review - "Hang 'Em High" (1968) **1/2

An important film in Clint Eastwood's career - he'd become a star in Italian spaghetti Westerns but this proved his popularity would hold in Hollywood films. Its an interesting cross breed - the spaghetti Western influence is felt here, notably via the music score and some of the visuals - but more overwhelmingly it feels like an episode of a 60s TV Western like, well, Rawhide. A lot of movies made by Universal Pictures around this time suffered from that fate - the sets look like backlot sets, there are these crappy musical stings at the end of scenes, it feels cheap.

Occasionally the piece rises to something more - such as the scene where Clint is locked in with other prisoners, a, impressively powerful execution sequence, the odd bit of dialogue and action.

The plot seems to borrow from the set up of The Ox Bow Incident (NB this could have been accidental) - Clint is wrongly accused of stealing some cattle by a posse so they hang him; he survives and gets payback. Part of the difference is he gets payback via being appointed as marshall by a judge... only it's a hanging judge (Pat Hingle) who is very keen to hang people. There are some mediations on justice and the death penalty but it all feels haphazard.

In addition to the usual prostitutes there's Inger Stevens as a love interest. She has a scene where she tells Eastwood she was raped and he looks annoyed that he won't be able to get his end in. Not to worry, there's a rain storm soon, they wind up in a barn and he gets his way.

There's a very strong support cast - Dennis Hopper pops up as does Bruce Dern, Charles Macgraw, Ed Begley, and Ben Johnson (who looks like he's going to be a major character but disappears after the first ten minutes or something). I've got such mixed feelings about this film - every time I was going to write it off, it could surprise me in some good way with quality... then when I started to like it, it would let me down. It feels as though the script needed another few drafts and for shooting to all be on location, or something.