Hurry Sundown (1967)

Set in the post war South of 1946, a G.I. (John Phillip Law) returns home from the war to find that his small farm and that of a black neighbor (Robert Hooks) are under pressure to sell to their land to the greedy and racist landowner (Michael Caine) who owns the land surrounding them and who wants to sell the properties to a major business conglomerate. Civil rights were very much in the news in 1967 and this was reflected in several high profile Hollywood films of that year including GUESS WHO'S COMING TO DINNER?, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and this pitiful entry courtesy of Otto Preminger. Based on a massive 1,000 pages plus novel by Katya and Bert Gilden, the film is so awful in so many ways that one doesn't know where to start. Though credited with co-writing the screenplay, Preminger threw out all of Horton Foote's (TRIP TO BOUNTIFUL) work out because it wasn't melodramatic enough. It's the kind of hysterical "evil South" corn where all the white characters (save one good white trash family) are rabid, foaming at the mouth racists and all the black folks are noble. Faye Dunaway, just a few months away from mega-stardom with BONNIE AND CLYDE, hated working with Preminger claiming Preminger knew nothing about the process of acting and considering all the good actors giving hideous performances, I can believe it! It's the kind of movie you know is bad and yet you're compelled to watch it. In addition to Dunaway, the cast includes Jane Fonda (in a career low point, she performs a sex act on a saxophone), Diahann Carroll, Burgess Meredith, George Kennedy, Jim Backus, Madeleine Sherwood, Rex Ingram, Beah Richards, Robert Reed and Frank Converse.