Que vienne la nuit

I first knew about this film when I read about it in the book, "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time" and I also found out about its location shooting in my current hometown of Baton Rouge, La., either there or elsewhere. I also read that the locals there treated the cast and crew hostilely which makes me glad that my family didn't even move there until 1975 when I was about 7 and being just a kid, I usually got away with getting occasionally angry whenever other children my age called me "Chinese" (I'm actually of Filipino descent). About the movie itself, well, the first 30 minutes seemed all right dramatically-wise with the setting up of characters before Beah Richards' over-the-top heart attack turned the picture into close of an overheated soap opera worthy of "Dallas"-of which George Kennedy, who's a hoot as the sheriff with a penchant for liking the "coloreds", would join the cast of in the late '80s-especially whenever that mentally-challenged kid of Michael Caine and Jane Fonda was constantly crying. Caine had just become a star with Alfie while Ms. Fonda would become a sex symbol with Barbarella though maybe this film also contributed to her status when she played hubby Caine's sax. Another notable appearance was that of Faye Dunaway in an early role just before she became a star in Bonnie and Clyde. Burgess Meredith chews plenty of scenery as a bigoted judge especially when sharing some of that with Jim Backus as one of the attorneys in a court scene. By the way, Backus wasn't the only Sherwood Schwartz series regular-from "Gilligan's Island"-in that sequence as future star of "The Brady Bunch"-Robert Reed-would be his opposite here. And then there's Diahann Carroll who would later star in her own groundbreaking series the following year called "Julia". Okay, with that out of the way, I'll just say that I thought the drama was entertaining but I also knew that it's not for all tastes and leave it at that. So on that note, I recommend Hurry Sundown. P.S. On Wikipedia, I just found out that Preminger picked BR on the recommendation of production designer Gene Callahan who lived and eventually died there.

This mint julep melodrama is a hooty delight. I suppose that at the time it was meant to shine a light on racial injustice in the south but it just comes off as an over-baked soap opera. Preminger was the wrong director for such a piece of honeyed excess, this is the type of thing at which Douglas Sirk excelled and could make trenchant observations while still entertaining the masses. Still worth watching for the cast alone. Jane Fonda gives the most enjoyable performance even if her honeychile accent comes and goes. And even as a sharecropper's wife with four kids Faye Dunaway manages to look ravishing. If you like overdone melodramas with lots of stars and little sense than this is for you, if not stay away!

I'm really not understanding why folks are so down on this film. Hurry Sundown is far from the masterpiece of Otto Preminger's career. But he did assemble a good cast who as an ensemble do quite well in their roles.

Michael Caine and John Philip Law are cousins. Caine used to work on a shrimp boat but married into southern gentry when he wed Jane Fonda. He's now trying to be a big shot businessman putting together parcels of land. Only two won't sell out Law and black neighbor Robert Hooks.

Law has just returned from World War 2 to wife Faye Dunaway and their kids. The war has taken him away from the south and given him an itch to wonder. He might sell, but Caine relies too much on the blood connection and approaches him all wrong.

Law does the unheard of thing in the post World War 2 south, he partners with Hooks and they dig some needed irrigation ditches using explosives.

That sets off all that follows because law and with some trepidation goes into a partnership with a black man. Something that just wasn't done in Georgia of 1946.

Both Fonda and Dunaway are ravishing and both are coming into their own as name players. Caine follows in the tradition of British actors playing southerners that seems to have started with Leslie Howard and Gone With The Wind. Law is the key character in this drama, it's his decisions are what turn the plot and he runs a good range of emotions doing it.

Hurry Sundown is not a bad picture of the south just before the civil rights revolution. Believe me pay no attentions to the bad reviews.

Lousy Otto Preminger film from K. B. Gilden's bestseller (adapted by Thomas C. Ryan and, of all people, Horton Foote!) concerns a greedy white land-owner in Georgia planning to dupe his wife's black guardian and her sharecropper husband out of their real estate, setting off a race war. Everyone is here, from Faye Dunaway to Brady dad Robert Reed, but the script is such a mess--and Preminger is so ham-handed--that nobody survives "Sundown" without looking foolish. Jane Fonda flirts with husband Michael Caine using his saxophone (!) while Beah Richards pantomimes a heart attack as if this were a stage-play. Preminger goes out of his way to make the rich whites despicable and the black folk saintly and reasonable--so much so that the picture might have started its own race war in 1967 (probably the exact type of controversy the director wanted). It certainly gave work to many underemployed, sensational actors like Madeleine Sherwood, Diahann Carroll, Rex Ingram and Jim Backus, but results are laughable. *1/2 from ****

You know, if the South ever does rise up and crush the North, they could use this movie as a perfect reason to do so.

"Hurry Sundown" is without a doubt the worst, most reprehensible treatment of human beings (of all race, creeds and colors) ever perpetrated by a "name" director (or any director, for that matter). Even the fact that it was co-written by Horton Foote lends little to nothing to a story that spends all of its lengthy running time creating living, breathing stereotypes.

Caine plays a good ol' Southern boy (yeah, right) who plans to buy up all the land in the South including two parcels owned by a poor hard-working colored family led by Robert Hooks and a poor hard-working white trash family led by John Philip Law...no matter what.

All kinds of Simon Lagree-type antics ensue from courtroom hysterics, lynch mobs, floods and Burgess Meredith in one of his most overblown performances ever as a bigoted judge who snarls out every third word or so.

There's a monumental cast at work here (Carroll, Dunaway, Kennedy, etc.) and you even get to see Jane Fonda work Caine's saxophone, but why did it have to gather for THIS story? The treatment of black people here is right out of a minstrel show and is beneath contempt, even for Hollywood. And the sexual hijinks within will make you cringe, no matter how much you think you can take.

What else can I say? Critics of the day lambasted this loser left and right, the National Catholic Office condemned it and its box office hardly covered the film stock it was printed on. If nothing else, "Hurry Sundown" will make all races unite - to track down Otto Preminger.

Not one single, solitary star for this claptrap. Avoid "Hurry Sundown" at all costs; do your part for civil rights.