The Hallelujah Trail (1965)

ridiculous rating

Purely Joyful Movie!

Perfectly adorable

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

This movie is a comedy. Approaching it any other way will naturally be disappointing. What makes it funny mostly is that it is a satire, a satire on the negotiating process. Burt Lancaster plays the CO of a cavalry troop near Denver in 1867. Four or five different factions are trying to make claim to the prize shipment, some by hook, others by crook. He tries to mediate them into some form of agreement. I don't think anyone else reviewing it here has seen it in that light. If you have been following current events (any years) and have observed political negotiations and kept them in mind while watching this movie, you will see what I mean.

The Hallelujah Trail came out in 1965, just as the traditional era of "Hollywood" movie-making was giving way to the modern era of the auteur and the independent filmmaker. In a classic big-time Hollywood production of that distant age, what wanted and got was (hopefully!) a funny story, a clever script, some big personalities for the leads and familiar character actors to support them. While Hallelujah Trail is a little long, it works if you enjoy spending a couple of hours with Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, and Donald Pleasance dressing up in their Western outfits modes and having a good old time with some eye-popping stunts, hilariously pompous speeches, and cutting one-liners. .Amazingly, though Hallelujah Trail came out only a decade before Blazing Saddles, they represent comedy traditions so different that comparing them is like comparing As You Like It with The Three Stooges with The Importance of Being Earnest with Hot Shots! All different comedy animals with their own conventions and audiences. HT isn't as funny as Support Your Local Sheriff, a small scale, sharply done spoof on the same genre, but much funnier than John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara in McClintock or any the dubious comedy westerns Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra put out at the same time.The Indians in this film, unfortunately, are the drunken, amoral layabouts, played by white actors, similar to the Indians in F-Troop. This is just something you run into in old movies, and in Hallelujah Trail it is easier to overlook, as the "white" characters are made to look no less foolish.A historic note might be in order, here. Racial stereotyping wasn't a frivolous issue back in 1965. Back then a sizable chunk of the population then more or less believed in the stereotypes of Indians as either noble savages, faceless, brutal savages, or drunken, violent losers. Conventiontial portraits of Indians in film reinforced those stereotypes, adding to the burden of impoverished Amerindians trying to make a living and a life in the real world. It was also quite true that real Amerindians found it next to impossible to get work in Hollywood as anything but extras and "Indian" roles in Westerns routinely went to white actors with an "ethnic" look to them. Consequently, it wasn't "brave" to show negative stereotypes of Indians in 1965, it was what everyone else was doing and it did cause actual harm. It still does, actually, but the issue is obscured by modern jargon—scolding about "insensitivity" and scoffing about "political correctness." Back in the fifties and sixties, when moral issues could be discussed without deferring to the self-indulgence of the individual, you could make a point about racism in blunter terms.

It's sheer entertainment. I think (as an adult) judicious trimming would have made this film a real classic, but the performances and the very pointed outrageous humor are just really fun. I love the narration and the "maps" which don't really show anything, making fun of that old technique. I'm sure many audiences of today might not even get how this is kind of the Airplane of the sixties. My family actually went to see another movie with top billing at the drive in and we all loved this one much more. It's just plain fun. A bit too long, I agree, but well worth it for the giggles. It's quite star packed for the time as well, once again, reminding me of Airplane in later years. I'm not a western fan, but this is more than a western, it's really a spoof or satire, with no one taking themselves seriously and that gives it a great deal of fun quotient.

If your a person who admires great Western movies, you'll have to see this great Western Comedy classic for yourself. A wonderful cast of actors and actresses and an excellent musical score make up the main ingredients for this 100 Proof Spoof!! Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Brian Keith, Donald Pleasence, John Anderson, Pamela Tiffin, Dub Taylor, Jim Hutton, Martin Landau, Robert J. Wilke, and John Dehner as the Narrator. I must also comment an the rare performance by Donald Pleasence as "Oracle Jones", this was a rather unusual but rather well played role by Pleasence, with his hilariously whiskey soaked visions and high spirits have all the makings of a great comic relief of sorts. Brian Keith also gave a great performance as "Frank Wallingham" with his serious approach as a "Taxpayer and Good Republican Scheeme", the freight owner and whiskey man is reluctantly overturned by many misfits and misfortunes later in the show by Women's Sufferage and the Sioux Indians, Keith is left "sinking" literally to only regain total drunkenness! Last but not least, a totally underrated credit goes to John Dehner, who does a superb role as the narrator in this comedical Western, an unmistakable voice with great quality and clarity. This Movie is well worth owning in your Westerns Collection.