THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL (1965)
THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL video artwork
BURT LANCASTER.....Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart
LEE REMICK.....Cora Templeton Massingale
JIM HUTTON.....Captain Paul Slater
PAMELA TIFFIN.....Louise Gearhart
DONALD PLEASENCE.....Oracle Jones
BRIAN KEITH.....Frank Wallingham
MARTIN LANDAU.....Chief Walks-Stooped-Over
ROBERT J. WILKE.....Chief Five Barrels
Produced and Directed by JOHN STURGES
Written by JOHN GAY
REVIEW BY BOSLEY CROWTHER
The obstacles and penalties of too much bigness show like deep holes along the way of the two-hour-and-45-minute comedy Western, The Hallelujah Trail. What might have been a fairly funny and possibly even classic spoof of the formula cavalry-and-Indian picture, had it been ticked off within two hours, evolves as a slow and tedious passage of stretched-out fooleries and over-labored jokes in this plush Cinerama-size extravagance, which opened at Loew's Capitol yesterday.
Plainly intended as a pastime that would have the fast, flippant features of the neo-Keystone slapsticks and the grandeur of a scenic spectacle, this job from the director John Sturges is so consciously burdened with both that they clutter and crowd one another and make the whole thing seem one long-drawn, formless blur.
Some of the scenery is handsome, especially in several vista shots of wagon-trains and cavalry outfits winding across the plains with mountains and buttes in the background and thunder clouds piling in the sky. What does it matter that such scenery would not be encountered on the way from eastern Nebraska to Denver, which is where the action is supposed to occur? It serves a pictorial purpose. And, anyhow, this is all a joke.
But when, in front of this scenery, we watch the prolonged encounters of a gaggle of women temperance zealots going out to halt a wagon train loaded with whisky and an equally zealous gaggle of thirsty men coming forth from Denver to speed the whisky on its way, while the cavalry circles around to guard the rivals, from themselves and from a swarm of menacing Sioux, it becomes just too mongrelized and styleness, both as slapstick and as spectacle.
Performances, too, could be better. There is a clattering unevenness and jar in the manners in which the various actors attack---and attack is the word!---their roles.
Burt Lancaster plays the cavalry colonel who has to cope with this lot of lunatics mainly by beetling his eyebrows and puffing violently on a giant cigar. Lee Remick plays the temperance leader with the bright-eyed enthusiasm of a fancily dressed girls' camp counselor who has never heard of Carrie Nation OR Molly Brown. Pamela Tiffin plays her second with finishing school daintiness, and Jim Hutton plays a cavalry captain who loves Miss Tiffin with amateur-actor swash.
On the other hand, Donald Pleasence plays a Denver barroom drunk, scout leader to the mob of booze hounds, with horrendous and horrible hamminess, and Martin Landau plays a Sioux chief in an ancient wooden-Indian comic style. Robert J. Wilke plays another in a neo-Art Garney vein, and dozens of others, including stunt men, variously do their 2 cents' worth.
Frankly, I found but one sequence that caused me to crack a smile. That is when a clutch of frightened Indians is barricaded behind a circle of wagons and a troop of whooping cavalrymen rides fiercely around the lot. But that comes late in the picture---after Miss Remick has surprised Mr. Lancaster in his bath (and Mr. Lancaster has surprised Miss Remick) maybe a half-dozen times; after Mr. Pleasence has been loaded full of whisky maybe three or four times so he can have his visions; after Miss Remick has plunged a pin into the rumps of wagon-train horses to make them bolt at least thrice.
Somehow, that seems an awfully long time to wait for one good gag.
Review © 1965 THE NEW YORK TIMES. All Rights Reserved.
Video artwork © 1991 MGM/UA HOME VIDEO. All Rights Reserved.
Title and logo designed by Karen Rappaport
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