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Hang 'Em High

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Hang 'Em High
Directed byTed Post
Written byLeonard Freeman
Mel Goldberg
Produced byLeonard Freeman
StarringClint Eastwood
Edited byGene Fowler Jr.
Music byDominic Frontiere
Release dates
July 31, 1968
Running time
114 min
LanguageEnglish

Hang 'Em High is a 1968 Western film directed by Ted Post starring Clint Eastwood. It is the story of an innocent man, Jed Cooper, who survives a lynching by nine men, and becomes a US Marshal to see that justice is done.

Overview

In the film, actor Pat Hingle portrays a fictional judge that mirrors the true life Judge Isaac Parker, who was labelled "The Hanging Judge" due to the large number of men he had executed during his service as District Judge. The film also depicts the dangers of serving as a US Marshal or Deputy US Marshal during that period, as Judge Parker also had large numbers of Marshals killed while serving under him. In the film, the fictional Fort Grant, the base for operations for that District Judge seat, is also a mirror of the factual Fort Smith, Arkansas, where Judge Parker's court was located.

Plot

Jed Cooper is a former lawman who has purchased a small herd of cattle. Unknown to him the cattle are stolen, their true owner has been murdered, and the bill of sale for the cattle is intended to incriminate him. A posse of nine men capture Cooper and accuse him of rustling and murder. Rather than arresting Cooper and taking him back to stand trial they lynch Cooper. One of the men claims Cooper's saddle before they hang him.

File:Hangemhigh.jpg
Jed Cooper (Eastwood) with Judge Adam Fenton (Pat Hingle).

Fortunately, a Federal Marshal comes across Cooper and cuts him down while he is still alive. The marshal takes Cooper to Fort Grant where the territorial judge has the matter investigated and determines that Cooper is innocent. He is set free, but is determined to seek revenge on the men who hanged him.

The judge warns Cooper about taking the law into his own hands, and offers him a job as a marshal, which Cooper accepts. Cooper goes back to the town near where he was lynched and finds Reno, the member of the lynching posse who took his saddle. Reno denies being a member of the lynching posse and then draws his gun -- Cooper is faster and kills him. Another member of the lynching posse has learned of Cooper's survival and innocence and turns himself in. He provides the names of the rest of the posse and Cooper sets out to arrest them.

Cooper encounters a sheriff who knows the men he is looking for. The Sheriff, Calhoun, tells Cooper that they are honest citizens and that he has a hard time believing they could be guilty. He and Cooper leave with a posse to look for the men but things change when they capture three rustlers charged with the murder of a family.

The posse wants to lynch the three men. Cooper refuses to agree to their demands for vigilante justice so the posse members leave him to take the prisoners back to Fort Grant in single-handed. Cooper does this even though the oldest and most dangerous of the three almost kills him. The judge then sentences all three to be hanged in spite of Cooper's protests that two of them are teenagers and not likely to have participated in the murders. However, when the judge asks Cooper if either of them did anything to help him when the older rustler was trying to kill him Cooper admits that they did not.

Cooper isn't happy that the two teenagers will hang but since he wants to continue his search for the other men who lynched him he agrees to continue serving as a marshal.

The surviving members of the group that lynched Cooper realize that Cooper intends either arrest them all or kill them outright. Two decide to flee the area. However, the leader of the group, Captain Wilson, says that he is too old to give up everything he's worked for all his life and start over, and two of his hired hands who also participated in the lynching refuse to leave him to face Cooper alone. The three decide that if they can't buy Cooper off then their only hope is to kill Cooper before he kills them.

Those three go to Fort Grant. While most of the town is watching the hanging of the three rustlers and several other condemned men, they ambush Cooper while he is "relaxing" in a whore house and shoot him several times. He survives, and after a long period of convalescence he hunts down them down in a final standoff at Wilson's ranch.

The movie ends with Cooper planning to go after the last two, Maddow and Charlie Blackfoot.

Cast

File:Hang'EmHighdvd.jpg
Hang Em' High DVD cover

Trivia

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