Luke Askew | Through the Shattered Lens

It seems like whenever film bloggers and reviewers are making out a list of the worst films of all time, somebody always mentions Hurry Sundown.

Now, don’t get me wrong. It doesn’t get mentioned as often as Battlefield Earth or Adam Sandler’s latest comedy. And, when it does get mentioned, it’s done with little of the warmth that’s given to Troll 2, The Room, or Birdemic. Instead, one gets the impression that Hurry Sundown is a film so bad that even those of us who appreciate bad films would find little to love about it.

But y’all know me. I’m the type that prefers to judge for herself and I’m also someone who rather enjoys being a contrarian. There’s a reason why one of my most read posts on this site is entitled 10 Reasons Why I Hated Avatar. Add to that, Hurry Sundown was directed by Otto Preminger who also directed one of my favorite films of all time, Anatomy of a Murder. How, I asked myself, could the man who made Anatomy of a Murder possibly also direct one of the worst films of all time? As a result, every time that I saw someone claiming that Hurry Sundown was one of the worst films of all time, I grew more and more determined to someday see the film and judge for myself.

Well, I finally got my chance this weekend. Hurry Sundown was on one of my newest favorite channels, The MOVIES! TV Network. And I proceeded to watch it. I sat through all four hours of this film (that’s including commercials and, oh my God, was I thankful for the distraction that those commercials provided). I watched Hurry Sundown and …. wow. Was it ever bad.

Released in 1967, Hurry Sundown was Otto Preminger’s attempt to take a look at race relations in the deep south. It’s a film full of good, liberal intentions and an apparent lack of knowledge about — well, about everything. As I watched this slow, almost formless blob of a film, I found myself wondering how the director who gave us Laura and Anatomy of a Murder could have possibly directed a film with a gigantic cast but absolutely no interesting characters. I wondered how the director who had been willing to challenge the racist assumptions of 1950s Hollywood by directing Carmen Jones could have been responsible for the corny and subtly condescending look at race relations that was Hurry Sundown.

Hurry Sundown takes place in 1946 and is set in rural Georgia. The war is over, the soldiers are coming home, and nobody in the film can maintain a convincing Southern accent for more than a line or two. (Seriously — I’ve heard a lot of really bad Southern accents in a lot of really bad films but none of those accents were as bad as what I heard in Hurry Sundown.) It’s a brand new world but the South is clinging to the old ways of racism and classism.

Preminger slowly (and clumsily) introduces us to the huge cast of characters who populate the slice of Hollywood Georgia.

There’s the sheriff (George Kennedy) who is so stupid that he can be distracted by an offer of fried chicken. Kennedy actually gives a good comedic performance but his character seems like he belongs in another movie and you have to wonder how civil rights activists in 1967 — many of whom had undoubtedly been arrested and harassed by Southern sheriffs much like this one — reacted to Kenendy’s character being presented as harmless comic relief.

There’s the racist judge (Burgess Meredith) who, much like the sheriff, is presented as being a comedic buffoon as opposed to an actual threat. The judge uses the n-word in every other sentence, which should be shocking and infuriating but, as a result of Meredith’s over-the-top delivery, instead simply comes across as being gratuitous and tasteless.

Then there’s Henry. Henry is a businessman who dodged the draft, cheats on his wife, and who has a son who literally spends the entire movie screaming at the top of his lungs. (Whenever that kid was on-screen, I imagined Preminger standing behind the camera and going, “More! More! Scream more!”) Henry is also a racist, though for some reason he loves jazz and often plays the saxophone. I kept waiting for someone in the movie to point out to him that jazz was created by black musicians but nobody did. (If Henry had appeared in Anatomy of a Murder, someone would have.)

Did I mention that Henry is played by Michael Caine? And did I also mention that Caine is the most cockney-sounding Southerner that I’ve ever heard? Because he totally is.

Henry’s wife is named Julie and is played by Jane Fonda. At one point, she suggestively blows on Henry’s saxophone. One can only imagine how audiences in the 60s reacted to that. (Actually, they probably didn’t. They probably just said, “Good thing she’s pretty because she ain’t no musician…”)

Anyway, Harry wants to buy up some farmland but half of that land is owned by Henry’s poor cousin Rad (John Phillip Law) and Rad doesn’t want to move. Rad has just returned from fighting in the war and he views Harry as being a cowardly draft dodger. Rad is married to Lou (Faye Dunaway) and wow, are they ever a boring couple! Dunaway was under a five-picture contract to Preminger when she made this film and apparently, she had such a terrible time on the set of Hurry Sundown that she sued to get out of ever having to make another movie with Otto. Dunaway’s misery comes through in every scene.

The other half of the farmland is owned by Reeve (Robert Hooks), a black farmer whose mother (played by Beah Richards) is Julie’s former mammy. Julie goes down to the farmhouse to convince Reeve to sell and Reeve’s mother responds by having the most (over)dramatic heart attack in the history of cinema. Saddened by death of his mother, Reeve is definitely not going to sell. When he’s not chastely romancing the local teacher (played by Diahann Carroll, who appears to have wandered over from a different, far more glamorous movie), Reeve is singing sprituals and working out in the fields.

One of the things that Reeve does not do — no matter how many times he gets called the n-word or is treated unfairly — is get mad. Rad gets mad. Julie gets mad. A liberal white preacher (Frank Converse) gets mad. But Reeve and the other black characters in the film are never really allowed to get mad or do anything that might make the film’s white audience feel nervous. Watching a film like Hurry Sundown, you can understand why — in just a few more years — Blaxploitation films would suddenly become so popular. It was probably the first time that black film characters were actually allowed to not only get angry over the way they were being treated but to fight back, as opposed to reacting in the Hurry Sundown-way of passive acceptance.

Anyway, Rad and Reeve come together to protect their land and Henry and the evil judge conspire to cheat them out of their land and — well, let’s just say that Hurry Sundown is one of those films that has a lot of plot and very little action. Preminger directs with a stunning lack of pace or grace, the actors deal with a poorly written script by either engaging in histrionics or going catatonic, and Michael Caine’s attempt at a Southern accent will amuse anyone who has ever been south of the Mason-Dixon.

I have to admit that I was really hoping that Hurry Sundown would turn out to be a sordid and tawdry little masterpiece, the type of overheated misfire that you love despite your better instincts. But, no. Hurry Sundown is just boring. The film is such a misfire that it doesn’t even work as a piece of history. The critics were right. Hurry Sundown sucks.

Every year there are always films of every genre and stripe which fly under the radar of most film-goers. Every film fan knows of several such films and always like to believe they were one of the few who actually saw it in the theaters when it came and went. In 2002, one such film was the psychological thriller/horror film Frailty by veteran actor Bill Paxton. This was to be his directorial debut on a feature-length film and for a first time it was a home run right from the start.

Frailty was done mostly through flashbacks as told to an FBI special agent by a man (Matthew McConaughey) and how this man knows the true identity of a particular serial killer around the Texas region who has dubbed himself the “God’s Hand”. It’s through this man’s retelling of the origins of the “God’s Hand” that we see the lives of a father raising two young boys as best he can until a sudden “vision” of divine nature changes their lives forever. The father begins to believe that he has been given a divine purpose to find and destroy demons who have taken on human form. To do this deed he has an axe he’s dubbed “Otis” to assist him. The reaction of the two young boys differ as their father goes about his new work. The older brother in Fenton Meiks believes what his father is doing to be illegal and makes him a murderer. On the other hand, the younger brother in Adam Meiks has taken on seeing their father as the hero that he sees him and supporting him in his new endeavor.

The film doesn’t inundate the viewer with much gore and violence. This is not say that the film lacked for killings. The father finds and “destroys” the demons given to him on what he calls “God’s list”, but the film doesn’t linger on these scenes of violence. It instead focuses on the reactions of the father’s two sons and the growing rift which gradually begins to grow between the three. It would be this rift which plants the seed of who would ultimately become the “God’s Hand” killer.

The film also manages to turn the theme of a father’s love for his sons and vice versa become a taut and disturbing study on the concept of faith. The film also does a great way of twisting the story in a way that we never know who the “God’s Hand” killer was until very close to the end despite everything being told by the man to the FBI pointing to specific individual. This was one of the few films which used the twist to the narrative properly and not as a crutch to make the film better than the source.

It’s this source, the screenplay in other words, which makes Frailty such an under-appreciated and great film. There’s rarely any instances where the story takes on leaps of logic that would break the audience from the world they’ve become invested in. In fact, I would say that the film was quite traditional in how it handled the story and characters. There’s wasn’t any special character and narrative quirks to make them stand out from the rest of the other roles. It’s from the performances by all involved, especially the very convincing ones from the two young actors playing the young Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and young Adam (Jeremy Sumpter), that sells the film. Matthew McConaughey as the man telling the story of the Meiks does a great job in a role that others might have gone overboard with. His restrained performance in concert with the young actors in the film would be another reason why Frailty became such a great film.

Performances, as great as they were in this film, required for a filmmaker to have a deft handle on his cast and the screenplay. This film was lucky enough to have a first-time filmmaker in Bill Paxton who played to the strength of the screenplay and trust in his actors. He didn’t try to be too cute or direct like someone with something to prove. I know that saying one directed a film with efficiency would be seen as a negative. In this instance I’d say that Paxton’s efficient direction helped the film stay focused on the story and the characters instead of trying to be flashy.

Frailty was, and still is, a film that seems to fly under most people’s radars, but it’s also a film that has gained quite a loyal following since it’s initial 2002 release. It’s a rare film that has continued to live up to it’s growing cult status not because of what people might have heard of it, but because it’s a rare film that stand on it’s quality. A film which, from top to bottom, made for a smart thriller with some horror aspects through in that didn’t try to fool it’s audience (even the twist in the story was a true genuine surprise instead of a story cop-out). If there ever was a film that needed to be seen by more people it’s definitely Frailty.