Hang ‘Em High (1968)

Clint Eastwood is Jed Cooper, a former lawman and wanna-be rancher who’s herding newly bought cattle to that ranch.

That is until he runs into a posse that almost immediately strings him up by the neck in a tree.

What he doesn’t know is that the man whose cattle he purchased has been found dead, along with his wife.

Cooper insists he’s innocent. The posse, led by a rancher named Wilson (Ed Begley), doesn’t care.

They go on with the lynching. One member of the posse takes Copper’s saddle, another his wallet. Cooper is left for dead.

Marshal Dave Bliss arrives just in time to cut Cooper down and save his life.

Cooper is still taken to prison, but he’s quickly cleared. Seems the real law caught up with the man who sold him the stolen cattle and killed their previous owner.

Short on marshals, Judge Adam Fenton (Pat Hingle) offers Cooper a badge. He accepts.

After all, he wants to bring in the nine men who took justice into their own hands the day he was lynched. He has a nasty scar around his neck to remember that day by.

Those nine men have various reactions to the fact that Cooper is still alive. A couple quickly wind up dead. A couple run.

And when Cooper refuses to be bought off, some — Wilson included –- decide it might be time to finish the job.

Review:

This film marked Clint Eastwood’s return to Hollywood after his three highly successful films in Italy with Sergio Leone at the helm. In fact, according the IMDb, Leone was offered a chance to direct this film, but was tied up doing “Once Upon a Time in the West” instead.

This is a solid Western by Hollywood standards. And the Spaghetti influences are obvious, from the opening titles to the theme song to the character of Rachel Warren, a shopkeeper who’s haunted by her past and whose real story we don’t learn until a good 90 minutes into the film.

But though it was a commercial success, it lacks the flair of a Leone film, or any of the better Spaghetti Westerns.

There is much debate about justice. Eastwood’s character comes to wonder if the justice doled out by the judge is any fairer than the lynching that nearly cost him his life.

And, in the end, he agrees to keep wearing a marshal’s badge in return for a pardon for one of the men who participated in that lynching.

You’ll notice lot of familiar faces in the cast, including Alan Hale Jr. of Gilligan’s Island fame. Inger Stevens plays the tormented Rachel Warren, who checks every new prisoner brought into Fort Grant, to see if they are one of the men who killed her husband and raped her. Stevens committed suicide the year after this film was released.

Directed by:
Ted Post

Cast:
Clint Eastwood … Marshal Jed Cooper
Inger Stevens … Rachel Warren
Ed Begley … Capt. Wilson
Pat Hingle … Judge Fenton
Ben Johnson … Marshal Dave Bliss
Charles McGraw .. Sheriff Ray Calhoun
Ruth White … Madame “Peaches” Sophie
Bruce Dern … Mller
Alan Hale Jr. … Matt Stone
Arlene Golonka … Jennifer
James Westerfield … Prisoner
Dennis Hopper … The Prophet
L.Q. Jones … Loomis
Michael O’Sullivan … Francis Elroy Duffy
Joseph Sirola … Reno

Runtime: 114 min.

Memorable lines:

Marshal Bliss, upon cutting Jed Cooper down from the noose: “Some people call this hell, but you’re still in Oklahoma Territory.”

Marshal Jed Cooper: “You don’t remember me, do you?”
Reno: “No.”
Cooper: “When you hang a man, you better look at him.”

Rachel Warren to Marshal Cooper: “We all have our ghosts, marshal. You hunt your way; I’ll hunt mine.”

Rachel Warren to Marshal Cooper: “Don’t drink your milk so fast.”

Miller: “You ain’t never gonna get me alive to Fort Grant, boy.”
Marshal Jed Cooper: “Then I’ll get you there dead. Boy.”

Judge Adam Fenton: “You used the law and a badge to heal that scar on your neck.”
Marshal Jed Cooper: “Well, how many men are you going have to hang to heal your scar?”
Fenton: “Go to hell, Cooper.”
Cooper: “I’ve already been there, judge, in your wagon and that hole you call a jail.”

Ben Johnson as Marshal Dave Bliss, the man who saves Cooper from lynching in Hang ‘Em High (1968)

Arlene Golonka as Jennifer, a whore frustrated with Jed Cooper’s lack of interest in Hang ‘Em High (1968)

Joseph Sirola as Reno, claiming Jed Cooper’s rifle at the lynching in Hang ‘Em High (1968)

Russell Thorson as Maddow, informing Cooper of what happened to the rancher he claims to have purchase stock from in Hang ‘Em High (1968)