Will Penny (1968)

User Rating:

7.1/10   

Director:

Tom Gries

Writer:

Tom Gries (writer)

Release Date:

10 April 1968 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | Western

Tagline:

The Brute in Everyman Was Also in Him - And the Love and the Violence

Plot:

Will Penny, an ageing cowpoke, takes a job on a ranch which requires him to ride the line of the property looking for trespassers or...

Plot Keywords:

Mountain | Ranch | Son | Winter | Squatter

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Charlton Heston	...	Will Penny
Joan Hackett	...	Catherine Allen
Donald Pleasence	...	Preacher Quint
Lee Majors	...	Blue
Bruce Dern	...	Rafe Quint
Ben Johnson	...	Alex (Flat Iron Ranch foreman)
Slim Pickens	...	Ike Walterstein
Clifton James	...	Catron
Anthony Zerbe	...	Dutchy
Roy Jenson	...	Boetius Sullivan
G.D. Spradlin	...	Anse Howard
Quentin Dean	...	Jennie
William Schallert	...	Dr. Fraker
Lydia Clarke	...	Mrs. Fraker
Robert Luster	...	Shem Bodine

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Finland:K-16 (cut) (1968) | UK:12 (2003) | UK:A (1967) (cut) | USA:Approved (Certificate #21512) | Sweden:15 | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG

Filming Locations:

Bishop, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

The original trailer was narrated by Andrew Duggan.

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: During the fight between Will Penny and the Quint family, one of the brothers throws a knife into Penny's chest. A wire attached to the knife a very obvious.

Quotes:

Will Penny: That's always the way, ain't it?
Alex: What's always the way?
Will Penny: Let a man die, right away he's "good, old Claude". How was he *before* he bucked out?

Movie Connections:

Referenced in 'Halloween': A Cut Above the Rest (2003) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Lonely Rider, The

Very good film

This is a good, good movie..underrated & under appreciated....and somewhat largely unseen. Never a Heston fan....I was very pleasantly surprised & taken by his "Will"....he gives a fine, understated performance as the aging loner just looking for his next job..to get through the winter till he can hook up with a cattle drive in the spring. Heston is excellent, free of the melodramatics & overacting found in some of his other work. Will is an aging cowboy, a loner, an illiterate, faced with the prospects of a dim future. He is someone who realizes that he can't do anything else but what he has been doing all his life..he punches cattle because it's the only thing he's ever done, and the only thing he knows how to do......even as railroad tracks laid on the prairie indicate that time may be running out for the cowboy way of life. Nearing fifty, he has never learned to read or write, and existed moving from one job to the next...

Along the way..there's a chance encounter w/ Quint ....the psycho preacher and his degenerate sons, Rafe , Rufus , & Romulus..featuring Donald Pleasance in a maniacal..over the top performance.., & Bruce Dern as one of his loony sons. These guys could give the Hammond Brothers ("Ride the High Country") a run for their money.

There's also Joan Hackett, in a lovely, subtle, yet solid performance as Catherine Allen , a woman travelling across country w/ her young son, in search of her husband, who had gone on ahead ...through whom Will sees a life he never had..& never thought possible. The film is notable in that it presents not at all a romantic image of the West..Cowpunching not being a glamorous profession....not a lot of 'Yeehas' here... it's a life of solitude and hard work.. The work is brutal..., hired one day and out of work the next....... Yes..there is action..fistfights..gunplay & violence...but the first fistfight..shows us the kind of territory we're in...get it on..get it over with.. Here we see the kind of people who must really have inhabited the West..cowpunchers,.families looking for a better life... (sure, there were bounty hunters, bank robbers, marshalls...shootouts at High Noon..the OK Corral etc.) .....but this is more of a character study of people very much like us. In one of the gunfights...a cowboy sustains a bullet wound in a way that's atypical of western movies..but probably pretty typical of the real West.

Another nice touch is the "town" Will, Blue, & Dutchy ride into...many "towns" really did consist of nothing more than a couple of buildings ..a few shacks and a tent. The direction was superb; Lucien Ballard's cinematography added to the splendor of the story. ..filmed in the glorious Inyo Mountains of California.

The music in the movie is mostly uninspired , although by no means terrible or distracting..

Some fine, familiar character actors are here.. the can't be anything but great Ben Johnson appears as the top hand at the ranch where Will takes a job riding line... William Schallert, Clifton James, and Anthony Zerbe all deliver good performances. Lee Majors is passable.

In short.."Will Penny" is a film that deserves to be seen & enjoyed.. & savored.