User Reviews

Hangmans Knot is only slightly better than the average western of its time.

However there is one huge difference between this film & film of today.

Randolph Scott was a top rated STAR of his time,he was able to carry a movie all by himself, BUT the powers that be back then always surrounded there star with major featured players who were well known at the time. In todays film, you are lucky if you even recognize any one else but the star.

The supporting cast of Hangmans Knot is a who's who of players, some were well known, some just starting out & some old timers who seemed to be in many films.

The cast here includes. Donna Reed,Lee Marvin,Claude Jarmen Jr, Clem Bevans, Jeanette Nolan, Frank Faylen, Richard Denning among others.

The payroll was not inflated either, as nearly every one of them were on contract to the studio.

Roy Huggins of TV fame both wrote & directed this film & it is quite violent for its time.

Do not expect a great film, it is just a slightly better than average routine western of its time.

In fact the only annoying note is the overly romantic kiss between Randolph Scott & Donna Reed at next to last scene . Back then it was required to have either or both a comic bit or a clinch.

The running time is only 81 minutes BUT there is more action than in todays 2 hour films.They thankfully did not have endless song scores to stop the action..

It was filmed in Technicolor in an area just north of Los Angeles that was wide open space back then. Today its all homes & shopping centers.

Ratings: *** (out of 4) 82 points (out of 100) IMDb 7 (out of 10)

I was kind of torn as to whether to give this movie a 6 or a 7. After all, while entertaining and well done compared to most westerns, it also suffers a bit from a claustrophobic feel as well as a lot of similarity to other films--even other Randolph Scott films. I'll give it a 7, simply because even a mediocre Scott film is better than the norm.

The film starts with Scott leading a raiding party of Confederates on a Union gold shipment. The problem is that they don't realize that the war is over--and that by killing these troops and taking the gold that they might be viewed as crooks, not men serving their country. Instead of returning the gold and surrendering (which probably would have kept them from a hanging), they decide to keep the gold and make a run for it. Scott says he's keeping the gold and plans on using it to rebuild the South, but the rest of the gang isn't so strongly inclined. However, before the whole thing degenerates into an all-out brawl for the money, an outside force intervenes. Various posses are looking for them once the dead soldiers are found and one group that corners them isn't particularly interested in bringing anyone to justice--they just want to steal the gold and kill everyone to get rid of witnesses--forcing the ex-Confederates to strongly bond together--except for a problematic guy played by Lee Marvin--a very typical 1950s role for him.

The film benefits from excellent acting all around and despite some very familiar story elements and clichés, is quite entertaining. HOWEVER, there is one seriously bad problem and one smaller one with the film. First, the really bad. In a fight between Marvin and Scott, you can very, very clearly see that they are stuntmen and this might just be the worst non-deliberate example I've seen (I'M GONNA GIT YOU SUCKA's is worse, but clearly meant to be as white guy with a mustache doubles for a black woman). They obviously are not Marvin or Scott--it's not even close. The other smaller problem are some story elements that, if you think about them, make no sense. Why did Scott and his men hold up the wagon? This made no sense, nor did Donna Reed suddenly falling for Scott at the end (an obvious cliché). Regardless, Scott fans will love this and non-western lovers will probably find it all tolerable at best.

Major Matt Stewart, CSA, (Randolph Scott) and his men have a problem. It's Nevada, 1865, and they've just shot down a group of Union soldiers and taken $50,000 worth of gold. Their orders were do to just this, and to get the gold back to the Confederacy. The problem is that the war ended a few weeks ago and they didn't know it. No one will believe their story if they turn themselves in, not with ten or so Union corpses on the ground. They decide to keep the gold and attempt to make their way back home. This isn't going to be easy. Stewart and his men wind up in an isolated stage relay station, pinned down by a gang of murderous drifters. With Stewart and his men are Molly Hull (Donna Reed) and Lee Kemper (Richard Denning), who'd been passengers on a stage. Molly had been a Union nurse and is a fine looking woman. Kemper says he's her fiancée, but we suspect that he's just a smooth operator, probably with cowardly tendencies. And there's the couple who run the station, an old man and his daughter-in-law, a woman whose husband and son were killed fighting for the Union.

Then there's the matter of Stewart's men. Most are reasonably good guys, including Cass Browne (Frank Faylen), a matter-of-fact realist with a sense of irony, and Jamie Groves (Claude Jarman, Jr.), the obligatory young kid who has to learn to become a man. There's also Rolph Bainter (Lee Marvin) as, what else if Marvin plays him, a mouth-breathing bully with a fondness for killing. "What's happened to you? Is it that easy to kill a man?" Major Stewart asks Bainter just after Bainter guns down a minor player. "Well, isn't it?" says Bainter with a shrug.

Hangman's Knot starts with a rousing action sequence that includes the attack on the gold escort, the tense appearance of the drifters' gang, the stagecoach chase and the first attack on the stage station. It concludes with a violent resolution that involves fire and rain, with lighting and betrayal all mixing it up with a lot of death. Some critics have said that the middle of Hangman's Knot, when everyone except the drifters is holed up in the small, two- room station, is slow going. I don't think so. It's just that the middle doesn't have any galloping. What the middle section has is tense character development. We get to know who the people are and see the dynamics of their relationships change, thanks to a shrewd screenplay. I don't want to make too much of this but in the hands of actors like Jeanette Nolan, Frank Faylen, Glenn Langan and Richard Denning Hangman's Knott turns into a pleasant way to spend 81 minutes. While it may not be an A movie, it certainly isn't a B movie, perhaps a strong B-plus. And it's Randolph Scott who makes the difference. He had long ago established himself as a major star. Like Joel McCrea, he liked the outdoors and had enough money and smarts to make the movies he wanted to make, namely Westerns. Most of the movies he made in the Fifties he also produced. Scott was a big guy who aged well and stayed lean. There never was any doubt which side of honor Scott's characters came down on.

Watching Randolph Scott handle Lee Marvin is an interesting lesson in star charisma. In this movie, Marvin is modestly billed but has an important role. Five years later in Seven Men From Now, Marvin is billed third and the movie essentially is about the two of them. Marvin is still the sneering bully who likes to prod the weak. In both movies, Marvin is such a strong presence with his own brand of charisma and vivid unlikablity that not too many star actors could have stood up to him. Scott was 26 years older than Marvin and looks it. Yet it is Scott, in my opinion, who dominates. Marvin steals no scenes he shares with Scott. That, in my view, speaks to Scott's genuine star power. In the movies, assuming the actors are both capable, lip-smacking evil will almost always dominate earnest good. Just look at how Walter Huston stole the show from Edward Arnold in The Devil & Daniel Webster. It takes a rare actor who plays good to dominate another capable actor playing bad. Not many actors had Lee Marvin playing second fiddle. Scott did it twice.

As this film opens a group of men hide among the rocks in the Nevada desert waiting for a wagonload of gold belonging to the Union Army to arrive. After a brief fire fight the wagon is theirs; there is one surviving soldier and they tell him that they are Confederate troops, led by Major Matt Stewart; on a special mission... he tells them that the war has been over for a month! Not knowing whether or not to believe him they head to their rendezvous. Here they quickly realise the man was telling the truth but their contact doesn't say anything to them as he intends to keep the gold for himself while the troops returned to Texas. Bainter, a hot-headed soldier shoots the man and the rest of the troop takes his wagon and head onwards until they meet a posse looking for them; some quick thinking from Stewart buys them some time but they know they will soon be back looking for them. After an accident leads to the loss of the wagon they hijack the passing stage coach and head to the station with the posse in pursuit. Once there they are holed up along with the two passengers, one of whom is a Union Army nurse and the old man and his daughter who run the station. As the time passes it becomes clear that the posse wants them all dead so that they can get their hands on the gold; tensions also mount within the group as Bainter starts to make advances on the nurse. Not all of them will make it out alive and not all of the dangers are outside.

This was a solid B western with plenty of action at the start including the initial ambush and an exciting chase where the men on the stage flee the pursuing posse. Once in the station house there are still exciting moments although for the most part the events just serve to ratchet up the tension till the exciting finale where the survivors try to make their escape from the burning building during a heavy downpour. Randolph Scott but in his usual solid performance as Stewart and Lee Marvin was suitable unpleasant as Bainter. Donna Reid does a decent job as the beautiful nurse Molly Hull but her role is not as substantial as I'd expected given her second billing. At only eighty minutes in length the film doesn't outstay its welcome and still manages to tell its story effectively; something today's film makers could certainly learn a thing or two about! If you are a fan of westerns this one is certainly worth seeing and if you are a fan of Scott or Marvin I reckon it is a must see.

This one starts out superbly. The main problem is a kind of Hamlet-like attenuation of a situation that should have been over rather quickly: you never believe that it takes as long as it does to drive the main crew out of the house they are holed up in. Suspension of disbelief comes at a premium just as surely as with Hamlet taking upteem hours and days and weeks and months to get rid of the big old bad guy standing in his way......but then there would have been no play, or in this case an entirely different movie.

However, the beginning is as good as any Boetticher, all silent, signals as quiet as Comanche smoke while a few rebels are ambushing a Union gold shipment before finding out that it was all wasted effort, that the war has been over quite a while. No doubt a plot to be rescued for some world war two Nazi gold movie.

Scott never looked better in a slick black coat believing a rather soft center: it's Frank Faylen who is the greedy one who must pay the price in the end for wanting the gold for himself.

Until the rebel band get stuck between four walls, the film moves like a western should. Yellow Sky , a much better foray into lust for lost gold is a lot more believable, and should be seen for comparison what a great director can do with the magnetic little yellow bags. That said, this still should not be missed for the opening twenty or so minutes.

Here's a solid little Randolph Scott number with a fine supporting cast taking place only a few weeks after the Civil War has ended. That's unknown to Major Matt Stewart (Scott), and his band of Rebels at the time they hijack a quarter million dollar gold shipment from a band of Union soldiers. Attempting to outrun the authorities that are soon to follow, they find themselves holed up at a way station with two stagecoach travelers who were on board when the Rebs sought cover for their getaway.

Lee Marvin gets a fair amount of screen time as the Major's trigger happy, hot headed second, and the story offers a number of scenes where the two collide verbally and physically. It was somewhat of a breakout role for Marvin, who prior had mainly uncredited film parts and a few TV series appearances. The expected final confrontation between the pair however is interrupted by the young soldier Jamie (Claude Jarman Jr.) watching his commanding officer's back. It was somewhat of a twist to the story for this viewer, as all the while, the film kept making it a point that the young man had never killed anyone before, not even during the war. It brought full circle to a remark the Major made to him early in their story that before they got back home, Jamie would have to find a way to become a man.

I guess I'm not used to seeing someone like Donna Reed in a Western, so her appearance took some getting used to. I can't say I was fully convinced with her character falling in love with the Major, considering the circumstances of their involvement with the Rebels, and even more so, the palpable difference in their ages. It didn't hurt that her traveling companion and self professed fiancée (Richard Denning) was such a lout, thereby setting up the comparison between himself and Scott's character.

The near finale with the Major against the leader of the outlaw posse (Ray Teal) was somewhat original in it's execution and outcome. Oddly staged, it was surprisingly believable that the villain could be hauled away, stuck in his horse's stirrup. Thinking about it, I wondered how far the horse might have run and what the fate of Teal's character Quincey might have been. Would he have been dragged to death, fallen loose, or left to some other fate? Curious to ponder if nothing else.

Ultimately, the Major vindicates himself in his sweetheart's eyes when he and his partner Jamie drop their saddlebags of gold bars. You kind of wondered what would happen with all that gold, and in some measure, I still do. Left with the station agent and his daughter in law, there wasn't much in the neighborhood they could do with it all.

It's not a complex story either physically or morally but it's not a simple-minded Western as Western's go. True, whenever the hero removes his hat his hair is combed and jelled, but it's not as if we had John Wayne in an oversized Stetson battling evil with a comic sidekick either.

Scott was the great stone face of Westerns. He had two or three expressions, a deep voice that sounded as if he had a slight cold, and that was it. His career progressed from light-hearted roles in the 1930s, through war movies in the 40s, and into Westerns in the 50s. He retired in the early 60s after one of his best movies, "Ride the High Country," one of the richest men in Hollywood, retreated to his golf course and never gave another thought to movies.

We have, too, Claude Jarmon, Jr., who made "The Yearling" and then more or less faded away. But we also have Lee Marvin in his thuggish heavy period. He's great. In every scene his pulpy oleagenous lower lip seems to droop down and keep his mouth open. He's selfish, a murderer, a rapist, and a betrayer of his word. It takes several slugs from Jarmon, Jr., to kill him and he pitches down with his limbs splayed, his most flamboyant death besides that of Liberty Valence. But then, come to think of it, it takes several slugs to kill anybody in this movie. Every shot that misses is a resounding ricochet.

The story. Ex-confederates rob gold from ex-Yankees and are chased by a band of money-hungry brigands. The ex-Rebs take a couple of hostages and hole up in a stagecoach stop surrounded by murderous goons. The core of the plot involves the interaction of a dozen or so people, divided into initially conflicting groups, having to come to terms with one another's real selves. For instance, Donna Reed, who looks as if she'd been raised in Iowa exclusively on a diet of applie pie a la mode, is a nurse who is almost engaged to Richard Denning, who wears a splashy vest. (You must always beware of men in the West wearing suits and loud vests.) He turns out to be a rotter and Reed falls for Scott instead and -- well, you get the picture. In some ways the most touching of these sub-plots involves Jarmon, Jr., as a young Reb who's never killed anyone, and his deepening relationship with a crusty old Yankee man and his embittered and widowed daughter who have lost their young man in the war. Okay, it's all a little mechanical, but it's the sort of thing that you wouldn't find Gene Autry mixed up in.

I don't agree that this film is as good as the ones Scott made later with director Boettiger and writer Kennedy. Scott being Scott, his movies tend to be as good as their villains. Except for Lee Marvin these guys are pretty colorless. Boettiger did one of his movies with Scott, in which Marvin was the chief heavy and on display more often than he is here. There is no real comparison between the two Scott-Marvin films. Boettiger's is a lot more fun, although this one isn't bad.

Although much admired in its day, "Hangman's Knot" (1952), is not one of my favorite Scott-Brown westerns. Critics love screenplays which preserve the Greek unities of time, place and plot, but, frankly, Scott and his comrades were holed up in the stage station for so long that I got tired of waiting for them to break out. Especially as many, if not all the characters, are compounded of the old, overly familiar clichés; e.g. nurse devoted to duty (Donna Reed), soldier doing his best to balance conflicting loyalties (Scott), untried youth overcoming scruples (Claude Jarman, Jr.), shoot first and always no-account (Lee Marvin), white man selling out to the Indians (Richard Denning), spry old gent bursting with philosophy (Clem Bevans), and the lust for gold making fiends of most all (Ray Teal and company). On the other hand, this is the only big-screen effort directed by writer-producer Roy Huggins, so it has curiosity appeal.

I didn't care so much for this one because I want the Star Cowboy Randolph Scott to be the Good guy. In this story he's with a group of bad guys who kill people, rob a stagecoach, & steal gold. He shot at good guys. He was a thief. He held people hostage. The good guys end up catching up to them. To make matters worse, after all is said & done, in the end -* SPOILER ALERT*- he doesn't even keep any of the gold. In the very last scene he takes the satchel of gold off his shoulder, drops it on the ground, & rides off on his horse. Dumb.