Home from the Hill

If you want lampooning small towns with big rich families with tons of troubles; then you need to be watching "The Long Hot Summer" or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof". If you want a good enthralling movie with strong character acting and a believable story line then this is the one for you. Having grown up in the South, especially in a small rural town I completely understand and can relate to this movie. It centers around what most of my generation had in our small towns, that one rich family who owned everything. Naturally this movie ratchets up the drama, so if you are not from this region you may think it unrealistic. Robert Mitchum is in one of his bests roles as the Cap'n. The troubles and trials of their marriage spill over into their son's life. Theron's youthful care free teenage life finally gives way to his budding adult manhood but somehow is related to the problems of his parents with a little of his own to throw in. I would recommend this movie to anyone, its a past gone era of life that I remember so well and well acted.

Though not one of its director's best, this film has to be one of the best ways to pass a rainy afternoon or dull night. Robert Mitchum has two sons: one legitimate (George Hamilton, who is spoilt and preppy) and one illegitimate (George Peppard, who is macho and resourceful but also one of nature's gentlemen, and lives in a hut with his dogs, waiting patiently for a word of kindness from his father). Mitchum also has a Southern belle wife who's locked the bedroom door against him for 18 years. Simmering tensions and overcooked dialogue make this just incredible fun - see it if you can.

Home From The Hill though it is located in Texas has the look and feel of those southern stories made so popular back in the day by William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. This is not the Texas of say Giant, this is East Texas which bares quite a lot of resemblance to the delta country of Louisiana and Mississippi. And Robert Mitchum's Wade Hunnicutt is not quite the same kind of local patriarch as Rock Hudson's Bick Benedict.

Whatever else Bick Benedict was he was certainly loyal to Elizabeth Taylor. Whereas Robert Mitchum's been absolutely notorious for sowing his wild oats around the whole region. Eleanor Parker stays married to him, more for the sake of propriety than anything else, and for their son George Hamilton.

Some of Mitchum's good old boy drinking buddies like Guinn Williams and Denver Pyle send young Hamilton on that southern tradition, a futile snipe hunt. That little prank actually sets the whole plot of the film into gear. It's supposed to be women who gossip, but these good old boys also with some of their locker room gossip that Everette Sloane overhears that sets the climax of the film going.

Robert Mitchum is cast in one of his best roles and it's ironic that he was a second choice for Clark Gable. I doubt that Gable could have done better with this part. The always dependable Eleanor Parker matches Mitchum all the way with her performance as the suppressed wife.

George Hamilton and George Peppard got very good roles in Home from the Hill in the salad days of their respective careers.

Though Home from the Hill does veer into soap opera it's held together primarily by director Vincent Minnelli and by a great cast he assembled.

"Home from the Hill" is a 1960 big, sprawling film about the Hunnicut family, led by Robert Mitchum. Eleanor Parker plays his unhappy wife, George Hamilton plays his unhappy son Theron, and George Peppard plays a ranch hand named Rafe. Luana Patton is Theron's unhappy girlfriend Libby.

Captain Wade Hunnicut is the wealthiest and most powerful man in the Texas town in which he lives, but he's a philanderer, which has made his wife Hannah turn against him. She has basically raised their son Theron because she agreed to stay with Wade on that condition.

When Theron reaches his late teens, though, Wade changes his mind and decides to make a man out of him. This means learning to use a shotgun, hunt, and learn something about women, though Rafe sort of schools him in that.

Theron, however, finds out a family secret and grows to loathe his father and reject him. There are other complications as well concerning Theron's girlfriend Libby Halstead and her father (Everett Sloane).

This film plays out like a big soap opera but it holds one's interest. The accents are a little broad - in one scene it almost sounded like they were playing a game of one-oneupmanship as to whose accent was the broadest.

Younger people probably don't realize that George Hamilton had a film career. He was young, handsome, and could brood with the best of them. Today he parodies himself, having realized his limitations as an actor, though he's always been extremely likable. In this film, actually, he's quite good, in part thanks to Minnelli's direction.

George Peppard, on the other hand, always took himself very seriously and turns in an excellent performance as Rafe, a man carrying around a lot of hurt but won't let anybody see it.

Mitchum has a strong presence as Wade. He was a very charismatic actor and gives his character some real bite. Eleanor Parker has little to do, but her performance is that of a woman who, like Rafe, keeps the pain inside. It's a very subtle performance.

The characters in this film are very well developed. It's a good script with fine direction by Vincent Minnelli, so you wouldn't expect less than very good-excellent.

The ending of this film is satisfying, and the family drama rings true throughout. Recommended.

I think this is Vincente Minnelli's great unsung film and may in fact stand as his best. It features one of Robert Mitchum's most perfect performances. The movie is provocative in terms of its ideas of manhood(some of its themes, particularly those concerning hunting, are very Hemingway-ish)This movie also presents a way of living that is today becoming increasingly anachronistic and unpopular. It is for this reason also that it is so fascinating - it presents a window to an ever diminishing way of life. Of course it is first and foremost a melodrama, but this aspect I found to be often overshadowed by the secondary themes and the little details, like Robert Mitchum's den (was there ever a room that defined machismo the way this one does?).