Hallelujah Trail

UPC: 027616859020

Studio: MGM

MPAA Rating: NR   Contains:[Suitable for Children]

Summary: In The Hallelujah Trail, Lee Remick plays temperance leader Cora Templeton Massingale, who is determined to halt a shipment of whiskey headed for Denver. The shipment is being escorted by the US cavalry, under the guidance of Col. Thadeus Gearhardt (Burt Lancaster). As the Denver miners thirstily await the precious booze, Gearhardt must fend off not only Cora and her minions, but a bibulous tribe of Sioux warriors, headed by Chief Walks-Stooped-Over (Martin Landau)-not to mention an outsized sandstorm. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Comedy

Features: Original theatrical trailer
French and Spanish subtitles

Hallelujah Trail

Format: DVD

Release Date: 03/20/2001

Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Cinemascope

Audio: DD5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 159 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: Spanish,French

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 --
0. Side #1 --
0. Scene Selections
1. Intro Music/Title [6:18]
2. Intro/The Denver Oracle [7:05]
3. Booze News [5:01]
4. "Equality Or Death" [16:44]
5. Cora's Last Stand [8:28]
6. The March On Denver [8:41]
7. Denver Citizen Militia [12:21]
8. Collision Course [17:01]
9. Peace Conference [7:01]
10. Misunderstood Present [8:36]
11. Peaceful Picket Line [6:28]
12. The Indian Rally [10:51]
13. Drink Under Pressure [11:01]
14. Hostage Exchange Drama [11:15]
15. That Sinking Feeling [9:27]
16. Postscripts/Credits [8:53]

Bruce Eder

The Hallelujah Trail was director/producer John Sturges' effort at doing a light-hearted Western, almost a satire of the genre. It dates from a period in which the major studios, distributors, and producers had decided that bigger was almost always better, not just in dramas and musicals, but also in comedy, which led to such gargantuan productions as Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and The Great Race, both released in that same year. But those movies, for all of their outsized casts and lengths, had a key virtue that The Hallelujah Trail lacked: They were funny -- not all the way through, but in many of their scenes and shots, enough to justify an entire afternoon or evening invested in watching them; whereas The Hallelujah Trail just lay there for much of its 166 minutes, eliciting a few chuckles (at best). Sturges had directed and produced some extremely long (and successful) dramatic films the late 1950s and early 1960s, but seems to have had no ability to handle sustained comedy -- every shot in The Hallelujah Trail is held too long, every scene runs too long, and he was unable to be able to get the kind of laugh-inducing performances out of his cast that he needed. Given that the cast was led by Burt Lancaster, this is not surprising -- Lancaster, like Sturges, was known and praised for many things, but comedy was not high on the list; James Garner, whose sense of irony is much more light-hearted and nearer the surface, and who subsequently delivered his share of comedic westerns as a star in Support Your Local Sheriff (1969) and Support Your Local Gunfighter (1971), would have been a better choice. And with that impediment at the center of the movie, and a director who couldn't achieve the overall tone required, the picture was doomed from the start. Among the cast, only Donald Pleasence, playing a sagely drunk, fares well -- especially in his first scene, which savagely parodies the scene with the village wise-man in Sturges' own The Magnificent Seven. Pleasence makes the most of his material and evidently inspired Sturges at those moments. His performance and Elmer Bernstein's score (one of his best), and maybe the chance to watch Lee Remick (who would have looked good in a burlap bag) modeling 19th century women's fashions, are the best reasons for seeing this movie, unless you have endless patience. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Billy Benedict  Actor 
James Burke  Actor 
Elmer Bernstein  Composer (Music Score) 
John Sturges  Director 
John Sturges  Producer 
John Gay  Screenwriter 
Burt Lancaster  Actor 
Lee Remick  Actor 
Jim Hutton  Actor 
Pamela Tiffin  Actor 
Donald Pleasence  Actor 
Brian Keith  Actor 
Martin Landau  Actor 
John Anderson  Actor 
Tom Stern  Actor 
Robert J. Wilke  Actor 
Jerry Gatlin  Actor 
Larry Duran  Actor 
Jim Burk  Actor 
Dub Taylor  Actor 
John R. McKee  Actor 
Helen Kleeb  Actor 
Noam Pitlik  Actor 
Carl Pitti  Actor 
Bill Williams  Actor 
Marshall Reed  Actor 
Ted Markland  Actor 
Buff Brady  Actor 
Bing Russell  Actor 
Karla Most  Actor 
Elaine Martone  Actor 
Hope Summers  Actor 
Whit Bissell  Actor 
Val Avery  Actor 
John Dehner  Actor 

Country: USA