MovieChat Forums > Hang 'Em High (1968) Discussion > The Look And Feel Of A TV Movie

The Look And Feel Of A TV Movie


Although this was a theatrical release, it has the look and feel of a TV movie. Even the soundtrack sounds like it was made for TV.

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I completely agree. The music was horrible, and intrusive and seemed to cue a commercial every 12 minutes. If you listened to the soundtrack, I imagine you'd think you were watching a Quinn-Martin TV show. Makes you realize how great Ennio Morricone's music is.

I'm not that proud of everything I've done, but I'm not that ashamed, either.

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Doesn't it sound like TV?
If you watch it long enough,you expect a commercial break to pop up...even on CABLE...LOL

Suspension of disbelief: Yes. Suspension of logical thought? I'll pass.

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That's because a lot of the outdoor scenes were shot on a sound stage. Makes it look like an episode of 'Bonanza' with all the multiple shadows.

Ted Post, Leonard Freeman, and Mel Goldberg are all TV guys. Even the music guy's from TV. That probably influences the feel, too.

eta: As I'm watching this, I realize what it is. Most of the scenes in a building looking towards the door or window are shot inside. So the outside looking out the door is obviously fake. Likewise the shot of Pat Hingle looking out his office window and the hangman looking back. The bad guys just shot Clint and when they ran out the door it was obvious they weren't outside. I'm talking 'Star Trek' fake.

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I've always felt when watching the ending credits that I was watching a
TV western.

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Yeah, me too. Especially at the end, I got the feeling that this was a pilot for a TV series.

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well, compared to the spagetti westerns, which had a very different mood and feel, i can see how some might come to this conclusion.

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The entire opening scene was very reminiscent of "RAWHIDE" (1959). Good ol' Rowdy Yates. Clint in this entire film was reminiscent of that earlier role.

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Skipper plays a blacksmith. Even Dan-o booked 'em, but this time with the Good Book. He likely got that cameo since Leonard Freeman also produced Hawaii 5-eau, which debuted on TV about the time this movie was filmed. Ted Post directs. I almost thought CBS was involved, but the movie even made its TV premiere on another network, ABC. The violence level was most definitely not made-for-TV.

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Clint in this entire film was reminiscent of that earlier role.


In the entire film? Eastwood in Hang 'Em High is reminiscent of Rowdy Yates as he crosses the Rio Grande at the film's beginning, but not thereafter. Rowdy Yates was not a sullen, brooding figure dressed in black.

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Agreed 100 percent about the TV look and feel, but if it had been a made-for-TV movie, it would have been a very good made-for-TV movie. It's almost like a special, full-color, two-hour episode of "Rawhide." It's kind of interesting that after the international stardom attained by Eastwood in the "Dollars" movies, and then the epic, classic "TGTBATU," he quickly jumped right back into the quickie Hollywood "Rawhide/TV" mode. Eastwood's screen presence in this elevates it to theatrical quality.

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It's kind of interesting that after the international stardom attained by Eastwood in the "Dollars" movies, and then the epic, classic "TGTBATU," he quickly jumped right back into the quickie Hollywood "Rawhide/TV" mode.


The Italian Westerns turned Eastwood into an international icon, but they hadn't made him bankable or well-respected among Hollywood's power brokers when he returned from Europe, in November 1966, from making The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hollywood was intrigued, but also hesitant.

In any event, in the spring of 1967, between the successful US release of A Fistful of Dollars and the more successful US release of a For a Few Dollars More, Eastwood possessed the opportunity to star in a big-budget, upscale Western titled Mackenna's Gold, in a leading role that would eventually go to the distinguished Gregory Peck. Eastwood's advisers wanted him to accept the part in the worst way because of the prestige associated with the project (the writer-producer was Carl Foreman and the director was J. Lee Thompson, who had successfully partnered before on The Guns of Navarone). But Eastwood turned it down, telling agent Lenny Hirshan that Mackenna's Gold was "just an extension of Rawhide." Indeed, Hang 'Em High proved quite different. Yes, there is a clear television influence or feel in the talkative (aside from Eastwood's character), plot-heavy, episodic script and the prominent use of the studio back-lot town (not to mention the lack of a wide-screen aspect ratio). In a sense, this television sensibility should be no surprise because writer-producer Leonard Freeman, writer Mel Goldberg, and director Ted Post had all been working extensively in television. But what Hang 'Em High also offers is a very complex, ironic, surprisingly subversive, at times iconoclastic examination of the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in frontier justice. There's a degree of depth, intricacy, and substance that is frankly foreign to TV Westerns, and one would be hard-pressed to find any American Western from the 1965-1968 period that matches or surpasses Hang 'Em High for thematic thoughtfulness and probing. Those elements, along with Eastwood's brooding disaffection and stylish detachment, elevate the film to theatrical quality (to borrow your phrase).

So, certainly, Hang 'Em High possesses its aesthetic limitations. One would have preferred to see the technical quality and wide-screen compositions that Ted Post would bring to Eastwood's Magnum Force several years later, and one would have preferred to see a town built from scratch on some natural location somewhere, as Eastwood would later do with High Plains Drifter. That said, Eastwood said much about himself by choosing—for his first American movie as a star—a script with so much depth and complexity, plus the opportunity to play a character who is lynched in the opening reel and must come back from that kind of trauma and devastation, both physical and psychological. Hang 'Em High questions many concepts and conventions that people tend to take for granted, dissolving dichotomies and revealing the slippage and ambiguity that accompanies real life.

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The Italian Westerns turned Eastwood into an international icon, but they hadn't made him bankable or well-respected among Hollywood's power brokers when he returned from Europe, in November 1966, from making The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hollywood was intrigued, but also hesitant.

In any event, in the spring of 1967, between the successful US release of A Fistful of Dollars and the more successful US release of a For a Few Dollars More, Eastwood possessed the opportunity to star in a big-budget, upscale Western titled Mackenna's Gold, in a leading role that would eventually go to the distinguished Gregory Peck. Eastwood's advisers wanted him to accept the part in the worst way because of the prestige associated with the project (the writer-producer was Carl Foreman and the director was J. Lee Thompson, who had successfully partnered before on The Guns of Navarone). But Eastwood turned it down, telling agent Lenny Hirshan that Mackenna's Gold was "just an extension of Rawhide." Indeed, Hang 'Em High proved quite different. Yes, there is a clear television influence or feel in the talkative (aside from Eastwood's character), plot-heavy, episodic script and the heavy use of the studio back-lot town (not to mention the lack of a wide-screen aspect ratio). In a sense, this television sensibility should be no surprise because writer-producer Leonard Freeman, writer Mel Goldberg, and director Ted Post had all been working extensively in television. But what Hang 'Em High also offers is a very complex, ironic, surprisingly subversive, at times iconoclastic examination of the contradictions and paradoxes inherent in frontier justice. There's a degree of depth, intricacy, and substance that is frankly foreign to TV Westerns, and one would be hard-pressed to find any American Western from the 1965-1968 period that matches or surpasses Hang 'Em High for thematic thoughtfulness and probing. Those elements, along with Eastwood's brooding disaffection and stylish detachment, elevate the film to theatrical quality (to borrow your phrase).

So, certainly, Hang 'Em High possesses its aesthetic limitations. One would have preferred to see the technical quality and wide-screen compositions that Ted Post would bring to Eastwood's Magnum Force several years later, and one would have preferred to see a town built from scratch on some natural location somewhere, as Eastwood would later do with High Plains Drifter. That said, Eastwood said much about himself by choosing—for his first American movie as a star—a script with so much depth and complexity, plus the opportunity to play a character who is , both physical and psychological. Hang 'Em High questions many concepts and conventions that people tend to take for granted, dissolving dichotomies and revealing the slippage and ambiguity that accompanies real life.
Not to mention 'Hang 'em High' was also a low-budget film.

It's also worth noting that this was Eastwood's first film with his own Malpaso Productions. Perhaps it benefitted Eastwood that he got his start so late in life - he was 38 when 'Hang 'em High' was released. But he was savvy enough to take control of his career and the films he starred in. If i'm not mistaken, Ted Post was chosen because he had a relationship with Eastwood on 'Rawhide'.

Again, Eastwood starring in a western - coming off the success of the dollars films (and Rawhide I suppose) - this was probably the only way Eastwood could get backing from a major studio and to try to establish himself as a star in the States. The theme of justice in westerns is nothing particularly new, but it wasn't just a "shoot 'em up" western either.

Even Eastwood's following film after this one, 'Coogan's Bluff', still managed to put Eastwood in cowboy gear.

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If i'm not mistaken, Ted Post was chosen because he had a relationship with Eastwood on 'Rawhide'.


That's completely correct, Mississippi. Eastwood knew and had worked with most of the other directors proposed by United Artists, but he insisted on Post because he felt very comfortable with him. Many directors (including some who had directed notable movies) cycled through Rawhide over the years, but Post was probably Eastwood's favorite. Plus, Post thought highly of the Hang 'Em High script.

I don't know if a Western constituted Eastwood's only possible means of receiving backing from a major studio for a starring vehicle at that time, but it might have been the only possibility—and it certainly represented his easiest and most evident path. The only question, then, was what kind of Western Eastwood would choose—an expensive yet thematically empty extravaganza like Mackenna's Gold or something with some character challenges and thematic depth such as Hang 'Em High. Eastwood obviously opted for the latter, even at the cost of a budget that, as you indicated, proved low by Hollywood's standards (higher, of course, than the budget for the first two Leone movies, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More, which were produced without a cent of Hollywood capital, but lower than the budget for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). Exploring a concern for justice in the Western was nothing new, but Hang 'Em High offered a chance to reveal the hypocrisies, contradictions, and false dichotomies of frontier justice on a multilayered basis that most Westerns never even approached.

In the seventies and eighties, interviewers sometimes asked Eastwood why African-Americans tended to be such enthusiastic supporters of his movies. I'm struck that one of the reasons is that, from the beginning of his starring roles in American films and his Malpaso films, Eastwood selected movies that questioned the 'system' in a way that most white Americans, and most films generally, did not. Black Americans and other minority citizens, of course, were always more skeptical of the American system (at least in its practice, as opposed to its potential) because the pervasiveness of prejudice and bigotry rendered its inequities far more transparent to their eyes. Obviously, greater skepticism began to creep into American culture in the late sixties, but even so, Hang 'Em High and Coogan's Bluff (both made in 1967 and released in 1968) were a little ahead of the curve, at least as far as mere genre movies were concerned. And clearly, Eastwood was attracted to such subversive and iconoclastic themes from the beginning, building on the general attitude of cynicism and revisionism that he had absorbed (and helped project) from the Leone Westerns.

Of course, Coogan's Bluff (despite some flaws) was also ahead of the curve from an aesthetic and 'cinematic' perspective, whereas Hang 'Em High, despite the occasional newfangled flourish, proved fairly regressive stylistically ("the look and feel of a TV Western"). In Don Siegel on Coogan's Bluff, Eastwood found an American version of what he had enjoyed in Europe with Sergio Leone, namely a stylistically dynamic director with whom Eastwood would make groundbreaking and iconic films of major (if initially fairly lowbrow) cultural significance. For instance, in J. Hoberman's The Dream Life: Movies, Media and the Mythology of the Sixties (2003), the former Village Voice critic extensively discusses Coogan's Bluff and Dirty Harry (along with Eastwood's self-directed High Plains Drifter), while also discussing the Leone Westerns in general on multiple occasions. (Obviously, his book extends through the early 1970s.)

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Feel?

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Lol. I liked the film but I have to agree. Watching this, the soundtrack reminded me of a Star Trek show from the 60s.

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Not just the soundrack. Sarek played the prosecutor, and one of the jailers was the Sheriff in Spectre of the Gun (OK Corral) - "Kill 'em any way you can!" - which was probably being filmed on the next set over from this one.




I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

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Agree. Something was off the whole movie, and you put your finger on it. Some of the fade outs about an hour into the movie felt like they were going to have commercials after them.




I want the doctor to take your picture so I can look at you from inside as well.

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