I like the stars involved. I like Burt Lancaster when he’s in the right project. Lee Remick is pretty. Brian Keith has been good.

But if this is a comedy I’m a little Green Martian

The only even slightly inspired comedic bit was Donald Pleasance as Oracle

As to the rest, well…..bloat comes to mind to describe it just like a lot of 1960′s movies that went on forever.

Someone mentioned Blake Edward’s “The Great Race” as being in the same big movie genre of the 1960′s. That movie also has bloat but there are some real comedic gems in the performances of Tony Curtis, Peter Falk, Jack Lemmon and the chick. It had a semi-clothed performance by Natalie Wood that was genuinely sexy and it had a better portrayal of a feminist movement over Hallalujah’s lazy portrayal of Temperance, although both portrayals would still cheese off feminists today.

In “Hallalujah” There is not an ounce of comic timing. There are set pieces that have the form and look of a comedy but the gag setups are inept and clumsy if the setups exist at all.

Just look at that awful confrontation scene when the Miners, Indians, Cavalry and the wagon train meet in the dust storm. It’s like they made up all the scenarios on the spot with no idea of connectivity, pacing or tension.

The actors are shamelessly mugging and doing awful double takes. There are times it works and there are times it doesn’t. This is one of those times it doesn’t.

The narrator’s narration is supposed to be, I take it, tongue in cheek. He sounds like he’s from a bad industrial education film from the 1950′s with upbeat, spunky music in the background.

The writing falls flat. In the first hour and a half of the film I did not even crack a smile. A comedy has laughs. My side remained completely unsplit. No internal organs were spilled in the viewing of this movie.

There is the egregious comedic portrayal of the Indians. People will say lighten up. Well, if it was a story about slave history with whites doing blackface would you say lighten up? I didn’t think so.

For instance, the narrator is translating the Indian’s speech as Pidgin English. I think if it was idiomatically translated it should have been portrayed as some kind of natural, fluent speech.

What should I expect though. This was a big studio project released several years before the fresh air of the early 1970′s filmmaking generation that would give us a revisionist western like “Little Big Man.” “Little Big Man” is a film which I love involving whites and Indians. Granted it engages in reverse racism portraying whites as the other/enemy but at least it has several actual guffaws in it, though it’s not billed as a comedy.

I think there might be a generation gap involved here. If I knew the ages of the people involved there might be a slight skew towards the older ones actually liking this and giving it 5 stars. After all I’m used to MTV pacing and movie plots actually getting to the point within the first 15 minutes.

From the ‘BIGGER IS BETTER’ school of film-making that was in vogue in the mid-sixties comes this so-so comedy/western. Beginning with “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” in 1964 movie comedies took on the form and approach of an epic. Immediately on it’s heels followed Blake Edwards’s “The Great Race”, Ken Annakin’s “Those Magnificent Men In Their Flying Machines” and this film. This trend continued and lasted for five years, culminating in Annakin’s 1969 second mammoth effort “Those Daring Young Men In Their Jaunty Jalopies”. But movie audiences had lost their appreciation for the formula by the time it appeared – the caper film was the newest rage and the slew of disaster films was only lurking around the corner ready to take up the rest of the slack! “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” has gone on to enjoy bona-fide cult classic status and is still highly regarded and well-loved by its many defenders. The others all have their defenders as well and rightly so where Edwards’s “The Great Race” is concerned, definitely a classic in it’s own right. And over forty years later many others within this sub-genre continue to delight and entertain young audiences today and that is a success that doesn’t show any signs of diminishing.

In 1965 director John Sturges could have made any movie he wanted to. He was fresh from the success of back-to-back international sensations “The Magnificent Seven” and “The Great Escape”; mysteriously he picked this project (he would never again direct another comedy). Burt Lancaster was in a similar position, owning his own production company and undeniably a firmly established star of the screen. He agreed to star in this film, reuniting him Sturges with whom he had done the immensely entertaining and hugely successful “Gunfight At The O.K. Corral” back in 1957. I’m sure they were both counting on nothing but the best when they set out to make this picture. Well, you know what they say about good intentions…

What must have looked like fun on paper doesn’t quite make it completely to the screen here. Right at the point the comedy should be peaking it falls flat and only rarely recovers. Many of the sight gags, slapstick routines, one-liners and snappy comebacks drop dead on arrival. This is not the fault of a great and very capable cast though; everyone put forth their best foot here in a solid effort to pull this off. The two major liabilities here: a director that didn’t understand comedy and the film’s mammoth length. Sturges, who had never had any experience in working with comedy, was probably unsuited to direct this film and that is painfully evident throughout. In hindsight it would have been wise to have an assistant director with experience in this field of movie-making. The script itself is stretched to the point of no return and should have been trimmed and tightened up. At 165 minutes it’s just too long to sustain the singular idea.

If you’re not familiar with the film here’s the story: The town of Denver is nearing a crisis with winter nearly upon them – there’s only a few bottles of whiskey left. A shipment is on the way to Denver but the odds against it making it to them are great. Several tribes of Indians want to liberate some (or most) of the shipment themselves; a ladies temperance union wants to prevent the shipment entirely and runs interference with the military men assigned to protect it. The Irish teamsters who are the wagon drivers for the shipment threaten to strike in order to procure as much of the whiskey for themselves as possible. None of this sits well with the Denver miners who decide to form their own citizens’ militia and meet the shipment to bring it safely home. The groups all converge on one another during a sandstorm resulting in a bit of chaos. Afterwards the commander of the military assumes charge of the situation; he works to resolve the teamsters threat to strike, gains the respect of the Denver citizens’ militia, continues verbal battles with the ladies and brokers a deal with the Indians that is misunderstood or misinterpreted – you’ll have to watch to decide for yourself. Later on the Indians surprise the military, disarm them and take the women hostage – demanding the whiskey as ransom. Eventually one side wins out…or so it seems. Again you’ll have to watch to see what I mean.

All the usual cultural stereotypes are in place here: Irish teamsters thirsting for whiskey, Indians desperate for ‘crazy water’, women urging the men to practice temperance, etc. The cast tries to get the best out of this but the overall result is only middling. Donald Pleasance as Oracle Jones and Lee Remick as Cora Templeton Massingale fare the best; Martin Landau as Chief-Walks-Stooped-Over is an embarrassment to see in this day and age (why couldn’t they have cast an Indian actor in this role?) and Lancaster himself seems to appear as if working under a great strain in some scenes – I can’t be sure if this is part of the character he is playing or not. A definite mixed bag, “The Hallelujah Trail” was poorly received in 1965 and time hasn’t been kind to it either. It plays better on TV when broken up by commercials which is how I first saw it.

The best bit in the movie: When Remick is trying vainly to convince Lancaster about the dangers of alcohol she reports to him that “Three of the women in my movement have lost their husbands to alcohol. The men literally drank themselves to death!” Burt’s snappy reply? “One can only wonder why.” There are other gems like this scattered throughout that are worth hearing.

I love this film. The humor is very good, the acting is superb, and it has a very catchy theme.