In the bustling western town of Springdale, Nebraska, a bank robbery goes wrong and a posse led by Ben Cutler (Fred MacMurray) soon catches up with the bandits. Ben wounds one of the gunmen, young Eddie Campbell (Robert Vaughn), whom everyone believes shot and killed Hiram Cain (Emile Meyer), the aging town marshal.

A trial hardly seems necessary, but defense attorney (and gubernatorial candidate) William P. Selby (Edmon Ryan) soon plants seeds of doubt in the posse witnesses, while Eddie adamantly pleads his innocence, though he freely admits to his participation in the robbery. Matters are further complicated because Ben's daughter, Laurie (Joan Blackman), is a childhood friend and longtime sweetheart of Eddie's, while Hiram and his wife, Molly (Kathryn Card), were parental figures to Ben.

(Spoilers)

By the time the trial comes around, only Ben is willing to swear he's certain that he saw Eddie shoot Hiram, and it is on his testimony alone that Eddie is convicted and sentenced to be hanged. As the gallows is built behind the jail, the townsfolk begin to resent what they perceive as Ben's unreliable and prejudiced testimony, and decide the petition the governor for clemency.

Up to this point, Good Day for a Hanging is pretty good: the shoot-out between the bank robbers and the posse is shown to be chaotic and messy, and the possibility that Eddie wasn't responsible seems very real. Moreover, Ben's actions become increasingly pig-headed, though not entirely unreasonable; in one scene he beats the bejesus out of Selby when the latter discusses the case with the posse, despite Ben's orders to the contrary. When Eddie pleads for mercy his statement to the judge is unnerving and believable, especially coming from a very good Robert Vaughn, normally an icy, steely-eyed actor.

(Spoilers Concerning the Ending)

The ending, unfortunately, plays very strongly as if it were hastily rewritten to fall more in line with conventional Westerns, but is completely at odds with everything that had preceded it. Hours before the scheduled hanging (but after the governor has agreed to clemency), Eddie's gang shows up to rescue him. And, like a light switch, Eddie turns from the thoughtful, utterly repentant youth to exactly the cold-blooded killer Ben had imagined him to be all along. (He even sucker-punches Laurie!) Yes, the entire town that had unanimously petitioned the governor was dead-wrong while Ben was exactly right all the time.

Eddie's sudden turnabout is so at odds with everything we know about the character, and so goes against the entire momentum of the picture, the effect is like ending 12 Angry Men with Henry Fonda's juror brutally stabbed to death on the courthouse steps by the very same young man he helped acquit. Though someone probably thought they were being cleverly ironic, the effect is only cheaply cynical.

The film was one of more than a half-dozen movies busy director Nathan Juran shot during 1957-58, including several (The Brain from Planet Arous, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman) he directed as "Nathan Hertz." Around this time Juran began making movies at Columbia for producer Charles H. Schneer, including most famously The 7th Voyage of Sinbad, but also the surprisingly watchable Hellcats of the Navy, the notorious submarine film starring Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Writer Daniel B. Ullman had written a number of interesting, offbeat Western and crime films before turning almost exclusively to series television. One wonders whether it was he, Schneer or someone else who changed the ending, or whether it was part of John Reese's original story and botched somehow in dramatizing it.

Even with that lame-brained ending, there are nice touches throughout: the tensely-edited bank robbery, intercut with everyday street scenes; Molly's sad acceptance of her husband's murder; the political undercurrent tied to the case; lengthy discussions about building a more humane gallows in the "civilized" west.

Video & Audio

Intended for 1.85:1 exhibition, Good Day for a Hanging is appropriately matted and anamorphically enhanced for 16:9 widescreen TVs. The image is notably grainy with anemic color, though this might be due to the "Columbia Color," an in-house lab job (like Fox's DeLuxe) prominently noted in the opening titles. If Columbia/TriStar's DVD is any indication of the process's quality, the studio was unwise to crow about it so. The mono sound (English audio only) is acceptable. Optional English and Japanese subtitles are included, but not French or Spanish. There are no Extra Features, not even a trailer.

Parting Thoughts

It's really a shame that Good Day for a Hanging should be so undone by its outrageous ending, because what comes before is engaging if somewhat derivative (Ben's me-against-the-whole-town approach inevitably recalls High Noon.) Warts and all, though, it's still worth a look.

Stuart Galbraith IV is a Los Angeles and Kyoto-based film historian whose work includes The Emperor and the Wolf -- The Lives and Films of Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune. His new book, Cinema Nippon will be published by Taschen in 2005.