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List Price: $9.94 | | Label: MGM (Video & DVD)
Salesrank: 4956
Released: April 8, 1992 |
| Our Price: $4.95 |
| Used Price: $1.88 |
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MPAA Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Media: VHS Tape |
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Editorial Review:
They riddled him with bullets. They strung him up. They left him to die. But they made two fatal mistakes: they hanged the wrong man...and they didn't finish the job. In his first American-made western, Clint Eastwood indelibly carves his niche as the quintessential tough guycool-headed, iron-willed and unrelenting in his pursuit of revenge. Oklahoma, 1873. Jed Cooper (Eastwood), mistaken for a rustler and killer, is lynched on the spot by crooked lawman Captain Wilson (Ed Begley) and a rampaging band of vigilantes. But as Wilson and his gang flee the scene, there's one very important detail they've overlooked: Cooper is still alive! Out for justiceand vengeanceCooper takes on the job of deputy marshal...and, one by one, tracks down the nine men who "done him wrong."
Description of Hang Em High:
After starring in the now-legendary trilogy of spaghetti Westerns for Italian director Sergio Leone, Clint Eastwood became a box-office star and imported the style of those classic shoot-'em-ups for this 1967 Western directed by Ted Post, with whom Eastwood had worked during their days on the television series Rawhide. Eastwood plays an innocent rancher who is mistaken for a cattle rustler and sentenced to hang by an angry mob. When he is saved from the noose by a passing lawman, he embarks on a renegade campaign of vengeance against the men who attempted to lynch him. Hang 'Em High offers a number of memorable moments and stylistic flourishes, and features a superb supporting cast of Western veterans, including Ben Johnson, Ed Begley, Pat Hingle, Dennis Hopper, Bruce Dern, L.Q. Jones, and the "Skipper" himself, Alan Hale Jr. Made just three years before Dirty Harry, the film marked a turning point for Eastwood, who would soon move into a prolific period of contemporary thrillers. --Jeff Shannon
Hang Em High Reviews:
Truncated image in both wide and std versions 
2008-07-28 - I love the film but... We get a two sides dvd, labeled "standard" and "widescreen". Standard has 640x480 pixels video, 4:3 aspect ratio, and widescreen 853x480 pixels, 16:9 aspect ratio. This is great, but the problem is both versions are truncated versions of the original. The widescreen is even more truncated ! If you compare two images, Clint has some blue sky above is hat in standard, and you see only half of his hat in widescreen ! I say it this way to makes things clear, but I'm a tech oriented guy, I checked twice what really was on this dvd before writing this review.
The 16:9 version is cropped from the 4:3 ! This means both versions are missing the sides of the original wide image, but you see more of the original on the 4:3 ! It's a pity to see such classics so poorly transfered to DVD. We need a new edition with all the original image.
If Only 
2008-07-27 - I reckon I'd really like to have seen this movie directed by Sergio Leone and the score written by Ennio Morricone. As it is, it just doesn't pack the wallop or capture the grandeur of the "spaghetti" westerns and is one of my least favorite westerns. The score alone is enought to make me gag; it could have been written for some cheesy made-for-TV movie or even one of the later Gunsmoke episodes. Clint does a decent enough job but doesn't look nearly as tough without a beard. The script is predictable and just doesn't have any air of mystery about it like Eastwood's previous work. A real disappointment.
Never Hang The Wrong Man...Without Finishing The Job 
2008-02-15 - After a few years as Rowdy Yates in the TV series "Rawhide", Clint Eastwood managed to attain international superstardom via the trilogy of wacky, violent Italian spaghetti westerns he made with director Sergio Leone in the mid-1960s. And then in 1968, he returned to America to make his own homegrown sagebrush impact. The end result was HANG 'EM HIGH, a significant box office hit upon its release in the late summer of 1968.
Here, Eastwood portrays a former lawman on a cattle drive through the barren Oklahoma Territory who is set upon by a gang of rustlers, led by Ed Begley, who proceed to string him up for getting those cattle from a ranching family they claim he had murdered. But there are two problems with that: Eastwood wasn't the culprit in those murders; and when they string him up, they don't finish the job. Saved from certain death by a local marshal (Ben Johnson, always that most credible of Western actors), he is then made a federal marshal by the territorial judge (Pat Hingle) and assigned the task of getting the rustlers who tried to kill him, but turning them in alive, so Hingle can try them and then hang 'em--and hang 'em high!
Eastwood's thirst for vengeance does not make him a remorseless killing machine, however, since he comes to question Hingle's brand of "justice", and especially after having a fire lit under him by a woman (Inger Stevens) who also wants revenge for her ex-husband having been murdered, possibly by Begley's crew (including Bruce Dern and L.Q. Jones). He happens to show a lot of mercy to an old man (Bob Steele) who had originally been part of Begley's lynching crew because Steele had warned Begley that they hung an innocent man.
All of this makes HANG 'EM HIGH stand out. More than a few critics groused upon its release that this movie was merely made to cash in on the Eastwood/Leone films, which racked up big box office in America in 1967. But while there is some of Leone's influence here, HANG 'EM HIGH is not as wacky or violent as those films were. It is a complex and quite thought-provoking meditation on the idea of frontier justice. Contrary to the notion of Eastwood being every bit as staunch a Hollywood conservative as John Wayne, HANG 'EM HIGH shows us, as did Leone, and as Sam Peckinpah would, that the demarcation between good and evil, and right and wrong, is an often thin line that is often crossed.
Ted Post, who had directed Eastwood in a few "Rawhide" episodes and made his feature-film directing debut here, sometimes slips in his overuse of the zoom lens and Leone-inspired closeups for certain shock effects (notably the hanging sequences, of which there are plenty, but none shown in ultra-graphic detail). But he does give Eastwood a lot to work with, via the screenplay by producer Leonard Freeman (who later created "Hawaii Five-O"), and Mel Goldberg. Hingle makes for a very cagey judge; and Dern and Jones do the villain parts to a tee. Also featured here are Alan Hale Jr. (much more menacing than his "Skipper" role in "Gilligan's Island" will have you believe), Charles McGraw, Arlene Golonka, and, in a brief but typically flamboyant bit part as a sagebrush religious psychotic, Dennis Hopper.
Featuring a good score by Dominic Frontiere (whose main theme would be popularized by Booker T and the MGs later in '68), and shot on location in New Mexico, HANG 'EM HIGH is one of the most underrated films of the Western genre from the 1960s, and marked Eastwood as a very efficient "star", on the verge of becoming one heck of an actor and director to boot as well.
Everybody has an off day
2007-11-17 - This is my least favorite Clint Eastwood movie - and I'm a Clint Eastwood fan. The score alone could put you off. Overly loud and overly dramatic, it broadcasts the sentiment of every scene before the actors can get a line in.
The plot moves so jerky that you begin to suspect someone cut minutes between each scene and story lines seems to just suddenly end with a sagging climax - despite the score blaring out that you're watching a monumental event. I also found the bad guys not nearly threatening enough to justify sending ol' squint eyes after them.
I give it two stars because it has the feel of a hasty film rushed to theaters to capitalize on the success of the Sergio Leone Man With No Name trilogy. In 1968, it might have appeared fresh for an American film, but it doesn't stand up well against Eastwood's later or earlier work.
The Shut Mouth Society
The Shopkeeper
When you hang a man....
2007-11-12 - A classic western tale of injustice and revenge, full of iconic western characters. Clint Eastwood portrays a man wrongfully accused of cattle rustling... is hung, and left for dead... The only choice? Become a US Marshal and seek out those who did you wrong.
This movie has one of the best lines in any western..
"When you hang a man you'd better get a look at his face"
