Hurry Sundown (1967)

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

While I would not agree with Harry Medved that this should have been one of his inclusions in his exceptional book "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time", it is a bad film...but it's also highly entertaining. Plus, while bad, it just isn't bad enough to make any list of worst films. Now if there was a list of overdone and stupid soap operas, then it WOULD clearly make that list--with nearly enough crazy plot and overacting to put it up there with the best of the worst! The film may have at one point begun with high-minded aspirations. Heck, a film about people triumphing against race prejudice in the 1940s is a good idea. But, unfortunately, somewhere along the way, the film makers lost there way and the end result was a shrill and silly spectacle. Too bad, but the film in no way is in the same league as good race relations films with similar themes like "Pinky" and "Intruder in the Dust"--two fine films that I strongly recommend.Why is the movie so enjoyably bad? Well, much of it has to do with the often cartoon-like characters. The good guys are perfect and noble and the bad guys are like Snidely Whiplash! In particular, you've got to see the snarling and scene-chewing performance by Burgess Meredith--who, I think, kept mixing up this role with the Penguin from "Batman"! That much bellowing and wheezing is like watching a couple of pigs rutting--not a real Southern bigot. Real bigotry is often deceptively nice or at least overtly evil--not funny like his character in the film. It's funny because it was just so badly overdone--like a pot roast cooked for 9 hours! Another hilarious portrayal is George Kennedy as the Sheriff--they don't come much dumber! Now this isn't to say the rest of them were particularly great, though a few performances were decent--Jane Fonda was good and Michael Caine's character was stupid and one-dimensional, but at least I could respect his assuming a somewhat credible Southern accent. They it begs you to think "of all the actors in the world, why pick Michael Caine for the part".Apart from that, if I were to try to describe the film it would be like "Miss Jane Pitman" combined with "Dynasty" combined with "Valley of the Dolls" and "Peyton Place"--it's not a pretty concoction to say the least. Yet, the combination is so bad and hokey and silly that you want stop watching--even if the film is ridiculously overlong and bad. And the ending was, perhaps, the most overdone and awful ones I've seen in some time--as the director apparently lost his mind and just blew everything up! To make things worse, the kid at the end might just be the dumbest child in movie history!! Having all the cast hold hands and sing "We are the World" would have been more believable! By the way, director Otto Preminger has long had a very good reputation. Sure, he made some wonderful films like "Laura" and "Anatomy of a Murder". However, later in his career his output became craptastic--with films like "Bunny Lake is Missing", "Skidoo" and this film--hardly the sort of end to a famous career.

Lousy Otto Preminger film from K. B. Gilden's bestseller (adapted by Thomas C. Ryan and, of all people, Horton Foote!) concerns a greedy white land-owner in Georgia planning to dupe his wife's black guardian and her sharecropper husband out of their real estate, setting off a race war. Everyone is here, from Faye Dunaway to Brady dad Robert Reed, but the script is such a mess--and Preminger is so ham-handed--that nobody survives "Sundown" without looking foolish. Jane Fonda flirts with husband Michael Caine using his saxophone (!) while Beah Richards pantomimes a heart attack as if this were a stage-play. Preminger goes out of his way to make the rich whites despicable and the black folk saintly and reasonable--so much so that the picture might have started its own race war in 1967 (probably the exact type of controversy the director wanted). It certainly gave work to many underemployed, sensational actors like Madeleine Sherwood, Diahann Carroll, Rex Ingram and Jim Backus, but results are laughable. *1/2 from ****

What a dull and boring film. What a shock that such a highly regarded group of acting greats starred in this terrible mess. Clearly out-dated, but even so, the whole story is utterly stupid, the Southern accents are laughable, the sex scenes are without steam, and the script is first grade at best.The only worthwhile thing in this snore bore is the beautiful and sexy Jane Fonda. Jane's scene with a sax is interesting to say the least. Poor Faye Dunaway is wasted here. Micheal Cain tries his best, but just can't pull it off. John Phillip Law is tall and handsome, however he is wooden and stiff and is a total flop.I'd Hurray away from this mess!

Few would believe that a film directed by Otto Preminger and full to the brim of top-class stars could be as awful as Hurry Sundown. But the evidence is here for all to see. Taken from a K.B. Gilden novel, Hurry Sundown is a hysterically over-ripe melodrama set in the Deep South in 1945. The film was made in Louisiana, and legend goes that many of the white locals were Ku Klux Klan members. They were so furious when they learned that black actors were working on a film in their neighbourhood that they sent threatening notes to the film crew and deliberately slashed the tyres on their cars, resulting in a permanent armed guard being stationed at the hotel where the cast and crew were staying. One can only marvel how ironic it is that this behind-the-scenes drama is infinitely more fascinating than the film itself!Ambitious young land prospector Henry Warren (Michael Caine) is bent on buying up land in 1940s Georgia for real estate. His plans are hampered when he comes across two pockets of land that he can't get hold of. One is owned by a poor black family, the other by a poor white family. Warren sends his wife Julie Ann (Jane Fonda) to persuade the black family to sell up, believing that her childhood relationship with the mother of the clan, Rose Scott (Beah Richards), will count for a lot. But the plan backfires, and Rose is so stressed at the threat of losing her family home that she suffers a fatal heart attack. Her son Reeve (Robert Hooks) takes control of the family land and also refuses to sell, resulting in a long and bitter court battle which ultimately goes in favour of the black family. Later, Warren focuses his attention on the other piece of land, owned by his cousin Rad McDowell (John Philip Law). Rad is equally unwilling to sell up, so Warren resorts to desperate measures in order to force them off the land. His plan is to sabotage a nearby dam, thus flooding and destroying the homes of those who won't sell. But his despicable scheme results in a tragic accident, and out of the ruin the families that Warren hoped to intimidate emerge even stronger and more determined than ever to stand firm against him.Preminger is light years away from the form of his masterpieces - Laura (1944) and Anatomy Of A Murder (1959) - with this piece of overlong trash. His approach to the characters is so patronising and vulgar that one can only look on in disbelief. Even more extraordinary is the fact that some exceptional actors agreed to play these preposterous characters. What was Burgess Meredith thinking when he signed up to portray the bigoted Judge Purcell? How could George Kennedy go from an Oscar-winning performance in Cool Hand Luke and a box-office gem like The Dirty Dozen, and then choose this for his next project? And what on earth possessed Michael Caine to think he could pull off a Southern accent as the conniving land prospector? At nearly two-and-a-half hours, this isn't even brief junk… it actually requires a good bit of your time to sit through, and few will be charitable enough to give it the time or attention that it requires. Just about the only positive that can be said of the film is that it is handsomely photographed, but that counts for little when the story and events on screen are so staggeringly awful. In various biographies and interviews, Caine has always stated that the worst film he ever made was Ashanti: Land Of No Mercy…. but once you've experienced Hurry Sundown, you might just be ready to disagree with him!