THE HALLELUJAH TRAIL was a road less traveled back in 1965, potholed by dire reviews and woefully untrod at the box office. Director-producer John Sturges’ king-sized Old West satire was one of the year’s three epic comedies, trundling in the wake of Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines and The Great Race. Their vintage airplanes and automobiles were the 4th and 5th top grossers, while this woolly mammoth’s cavalry & company collapsed from exhaustion as #78, the $3,200,000 take against a cost of $7,000,000 registering a Custerish wipeout. Sturges fessed up: “We all thought it was going to be a hit picture, until we hit an audience.”  *

“NOW I see it!!

“The leaves turned early in that year. It could be a long, hard winter. The signs were everywhere — in the high country, the morning frost would sometimes last until afternoon. Buffalo were feeding ravenously. Beaver were damming and storing with strange vigor. Horses and dogs were becoming shaggy-haired as never before.”

Colorado, Fall of 1867. Winter looms and Denver is out of whiskey. When 40 wagons of hard stuff and champagne start toward the booze-famished city, it makes a hangover-load of trouble for U.S. cavalry ‘Col. Thaddeus Gearhart’ (Burt Lancaster) who has to fend off lady temperance crusaders led by firebrand ‘Cora Templeton Massingale’ (Lee Remick), blustery ‘Frank Wallingham’ (Brian Keith), “a taxpayer a good Republican!”, truculent Irish teamsters and emboldened, equally ‘thirsty’ Sioux on the warpath. His daughter ‘Louise’ (Pamela Tiffin) is smitten by his ‘Capt. Slater’ (Jim Hutton) and hooch-fueled ‘Oracle Jones’ (Donald Pleasence) offers semi-sage advice when primed. Collision imminent.

First the Good, of which there is enough for many western fans (or if you merely fancy scenery) and those not so woke-stricken they can’t take some genre-kidding and carbon-dated hee-hawing. Front to finish, under the expert camera command of Robert Surtees this looks terrific, the Ultra Panavision 70mm vistas of the locations (mostly in New Mexico) practically a vacation. The star-watching is enjoyable (Remick is gorgeous, Pleasence is a hoot), the stunt work is wild and character fave John Dehner’s droll narration draws smiles. Justifiable praise went to Elmer Bernstein’s score; he kicks it all off with a rousing theme song.

Ahem…while variably amusing, it’s just not the laugh-fest it’s meant to be, the ‘drunken Injun’ jokes don’t exactly age well (to be fair, everyone gets lampooned), the Irish business is flat (not helped by charmless Tom Stern), it all takes forever to get started and then, like crossing the plains, never seems to end: roadshow releases (in Cinerama theaters) with Overture, Intermission and Exit Music drag out to 165 minutes, too long by at least 40. Perhaps Bill Gulick’s 192-page novel (spun, very loosely, from a real incident) was a knee-slapper, but John Gay’s script is a let-down. Keith hams, bellowing so much he merely grates. Martin Landau (as ‘Walks-Stooped-Over’) and Robert J. Wilke (‘Five Barrels’), made up as the hapless Sioux, give it their best shots, and no doubt the send-ups meant no offense, but discomfort stretches a butte too far. Hutton is likable as always (he had a much better role that year in Major Dundee) but Tiffin is wasted. Character reliable John Anderson does yeoman service.

Bad weather put shooting behind at least six weeks, costs mushroomed, stuntman Bill Williams was killed doing a wagon-crash scene. Sturges took a real hit when this bombed, along with the less-than-hoped-for response to his other offering that year, The Satan Bug (it’s cool, anyway, a neat thriller). United Artists wasn’t thrilled, having to manage this loss with that incurred by The Greatest Story Ever Told.   Goldfinger rode to the rescue. Your intrepid correspondent (“for the Shinbone Star’) clearly remembers seeing The Hallelujah Trail as a ten-year-old and also recall audience restlessness as it bore on and wore them down. I rewatch it from time to time, and enjoy it in a nostalgic fashion, yet always end up wishing it was as good as John Sturges wanted it to be. **

Sprinkled in bit parts with the likes of Dub Taylor, Whit Bissell, Val Avery, Helen Kleeb, Billy Benedict, Hope Summers, Eddie Little Sky, Larry Duran and Bing Russell.

John Anderson, 1922-1992

* By our count the year was crammed with no less than 44 comedies. A few were & still are fun: way too many were & remain awful. Besides being in the trio of biggies, ‘Trail’ was one of five western farces vying for yocks. Led by the hit Cat Ballou, there was the mild The Rounders, the overlooked delight Viva Maria! and The 3 Stooges wan swansong The Outlaws Is Coming. While Sturges misguided epic isn’t a home run (more of a bunt to second base) it clobbers the cowpies out of most of the herd. Count the laughs–one hand will suffice–in What’s New Pussycat?, John Goldfarb Please Come Home, The Family Jewels, I’ll Take Sweden   three Elvis groaners or a quintet of ‘Beach Party’ duds.

** Assistant director Tim Zinnemann (director Fred’s son) on Gallup, New Mexico of the mid 1960s: “a truck stop on the old Route 66. It was a very rough town…There were a lot of bars, and everybody went to all of them, and everybody got into trouble.”