Hurry Sundown (1967)

Director:

Otto Preminger

Writers:

Horton Foote (writer)
Bert Gilden (novel)

Release Date:

9 February 1967 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Tagline:

An explosive film. Its young stars are dynamite!

Plot:

Following the Second World War, a northern cannery combine negotiates for the purchase of a large tract of uncultivated Georgia farmland...

Plot Keywords:

Mammy | Symbolism | Hatred | Race Relations | Flood

Awards:

Nominated for Golden Globe. Another 2 wins

Cast

Michael Caine	...	Henry Warren
Loring Smith	...	Thomas Elwell
Peter Goff	...	Lipscomb
Jane Fonda	...	Julie Ann Warren
George Kennedy	...	Sheriff Coombs
John Phillip Law	...	Rad McDowell
Luke Askew	...	Dolph Higginson
Robert Hooks	...	Reeve Scott
Beah Richards	...	Rose Scott
Burgess Meredith	...	Judge Purcell
Donna Danton	...	Sukie Purcell
Madeleine Sherwood	...	Eula Purcell
Frank Converse	...	Reverend Clem De Lavery
William Elder	...	Bishop
Steve Sanders	...	Charles McDowell

Runtime:

146 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Canada:R (Nova Scotia) | West Germany:16 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15 | UK:A | USA:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA

Company:

Otto Preminger Films

Trivia:

One of the films included in "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time (and how they got that way)" by Harry Medved and Randy Lowell.

Goofs:

Anachronisms: The story is set in 1946, but an early scene features a Sikorsky S-55 helicopter (also known by its military designation H-19 Chickasaw), which wasn't produced until 1950.

Quotes:

Rose Scott: Sometin's ailin' you, Reeve.
Reeve Scott: No, Mama.
Rose Scott: Well, sometin's hasn't changed your mood since breakfast. Tell me.
Reeve Scott: Mama, you better dan anyo' dat radar dey had out in de Souf Pacific.
Rose Scott: I don' know nothin' 'bout radar, but I know when sometin's plaguin' ma chile.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Century of Black Cinema (2003) (V)

Soundtrack:

Hurry Sundown

Incredible cast in flaccid racial melodrama...

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 hissable and 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 really wanted, only the movie was a flop). It certainly gave work to lots of under-employed, sensational actors like Madeleine Sherwood, Diahann Carroll, Rex Ingram, and Jim Backus, but results are pretty laughable. *1/2 from ****