Ballad of Cable Hogue
by Sam Peckinpah
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Product details
Actor: David Warner, Jason Robards, Slim Pickens, Stella Stevens, Strother MartinDirector: Sam Peckinpah
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Color, HiFi Sound, NTSC
Running Time: 122 minutes
Release Date: 1993-08-02
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video
VHS Movie Reviews of Ballad of Cable Hogue
Movie Review: Not without merit despite juvenile comedy and Peckinpah's misogyny
Summary: 3 Stars
Confounding expectation, Peckinpah's follow up to "The Wild Bunch" is a broad comedy. The humour is on a pretty juvenile level though and a scene in the middle where a drunken priest (David Warner) consoles a grieving woman is particularly idiotic and demeaning to women (one could write a whole thesis about Peckinpah's misogyny and generally warped attitude to women). Despite this, Peckinpah does recreate the atmosphere of an old Western town and extends the boundaries of the Western genre.Movie Review: Dying Of Thirst In The Desert? Stop By And See Cable Hogue!!!
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed The Ballad of Cable Hogue alot. It's quite a wonderful, lesser-known cinematic gem from 1970 and certainly not your typical western, which is a good thing. Out of all of director Sam Peckinpah's numerous westerns, this one is probably the most viewer-friendly and identifiable.
The story concerns titular frontiersman Cable Hogue (the great Jason Robards) doing his best to live out a minimalist existence while resisting change out on the western Arizona/Nevada plains in the very last days of the waning Old West in 1908. When we first meet him in the film's opening, he's betrayed by his two former partners, Bowen and Taggart (Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones, respectively) who steal his mule and provisions and leave him to die out in the blazing sun of the vast Arizona desert. He stumbles around dehydrated for four days close to death until he is saved by miraculously discovering water from a natural underground spring close to a regularly traveled wagon route. With the help of supplies dropped off to him from the passing wagons and stagecoaches, he decides that instead of leaving the desert behind, he will instead stay with the spring he has discovered and build it up into his very own little pitt-stop-style oasis in the desert, so other thristy travelers and wanderers passing through the area will have a place to stop and drink. Along the way, Cable is befriended and assisted by a lascivious preacher, Joshua Sloan (David Warner) and a feisty prostitute, Hildy (Stella Stevens), from a local, nearby town who dreams of the big, upscale life in San Francisco.
Early on he even stakes a claim and gets a bank loan on the land and spring and eventually even builds it up into an impressive little hitching post complete with a cabin, horse pens, rattlesnakes and a picnic area and watering spring. Pretty soon, customers from all over are stopping by Cable's now bustling and thriving little watering hole and pitt-stop. He eventually starts making good profits and becomes a legitimate, locally well-known businessman. He even dubs his oasis as Cable Springs, a cinematic implication that this watering hole was the foundation of what eventually became the modern-day city. Interestingly enough, Cable Hogue's primary motive for starting the oasis is not profit, but a patient revenge strategy in knowing the fact that his two afforementioned former comrades are still out there and will eventually and unsuspectingly drop by for a drink at some point. That's when Cable Hogue will be ready for them! Will he have his retribution on the two no-good weasels who left him for dead? You'll just have to watch and see.
It's an interesting and original little story, with good humor and characterization throughout. Jason Robards provides an excellent, gently wry performance and his character of Cable Hogue is a man with passions we can feel and understand. It's fairly safe to say that The Ballad of Cable Hogue is the most likeable and watchable of Sam Peckinpah's films, especially to the casual viewer. Unlike Peckinpah's other western features, the focus here is less on action-violence and more on characterization, which should make it a good introductory film for those new to or not as familiar with Sam Peckinpah's normally gritty style. It also even has a few poignant elements here and there, namely that of people's attitudes in the very first days of the 20th Century toward the progress and changing landscapes of the American West, a theme that was recurrent in many of Sam Peckinpah's westerns. Overall, a great, enjoyable film that's still worth a view.
Movie Review: Great . . . but
Summary: 4 Stars
As other reviewers have pointed out, this is a feel-good gem (unlike so much of the director's movie work---not TV, though): great cast, great acting, well directed, lovely story, if a trifle "episodic". Meaning too long. Could'a been about a half hour shorter.Movie Review: Thirsty for a good western? Here it is.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a great western. Nontraditional? Yes, but in a good way. The story is a quick tale of revenge and regret. A window into how a man's soul can be spoiled be hate and greed. All in all, not a bad example of the 60s western. I would suggest everyone see this one. Movie Review: Love Stella Stevens
Summary: 4 Stars
Oh My; Stella Stevens! How do I love you!? Let me count the ways! Love this film.
Summary of Ballad of Cable Hogue
Sam Peckinpah's light-hearted, rambunctious ode to the dying Wild West, with Jason Robards as a rascally prospector who transforms a desert water-hole into big business. Year: 1970 Director: Sam Peckinpah Starring: Jason Robards, Stella Stevens, David WarnerWhat does it tell us that Sam Peckinpah's most joyous and life-affirming movie is also his most underappreciated? The Ballad of Cable Hogue was made in that singular moment when, having just completed The Wild Bunch, Peckinpah knew he was back in the game as a feature-film director; and before anyone (including Peckinpah himself?) had an inkling of how completely he was about to redefine the Western genre, contemporary American filmmaking, and his own personal legend.
Cable Hogue is a splendiferous entertainment: a grufty Western tall tale, a lusty comedy, and also (in critic Kathleen Murphy's phrase) "a musical about the economic and emotional complexities of capitalism." Its title character--Jason Robards in a great, exuberant gift of a performance--is an ornery varmint left by two scurrilous partners (L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin) to die in the desert. Through pure cussedness and what may be dumb luck, may be divine intervention, he "finds water where it wasn't" and survives. Nothing to do now but settle back, let his waterhole--the only one on the stage line between Deaddog and Gila--make him a rich man, and await the day those two old partners drop by his waystation.
Besides such Peckinpah regulars as Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, and Gene Evans, the movie features Stella Stevens in her career-best role as Hildy, Hogue's best reason for getting into town now and again, and David Warner, an itinerant preacher and full-time lech who becomes his soulmate. Lucien Ballard photographed, and there's a charming song score (by Richard Gillis) whose neglect is as mystifying as that of the film. Above all, there is Sam Peckinpah exulting in the lyrical, heart-filling possibilities of making a motion picture, trying just about anything, and finding it beautiful. This film was his personal favorite. --Richard T. Jameson
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