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One of my all time favorites.

Admirable film.

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

A Time For Killing takes place in the southwestern territory of Arizona just days before the Civil War is to end. Several southern prisoners are held captive in an army stockade commanded by Emile Meyer. The prisoners could probably just sit things out and go home. But George Hamilton the commanding officer among the prisoners has an agenda all his own. The time and setting are similar to the 1953 William Holden film Escape from Fort Bravo and the Sam Peckinpaugh flawed classic Major Dundee which had come out a couple years earlier.Hamilton's from the Deep South, the part that General Sherman has just ravaged. So Hamilton figures he's got some payback coming and after escaping he kidnaps Indian missionary Inger Stevens who is the betrothed of second in command Glenn Ford and does a little ravaging of his own. To give Ford a little personal incentive to come after him so he can kill some more Yankees. This mind you is after the escaping Confederates kill a dispatch rider bringing news of Lee's surrender at Appomattox.With the Civil War so close to an end it would have taken one charismatic leader to have kept those Confederates in line for this crazy mission. And George Hamilton is too nice to really be convincing in the part of a revenge seeking southerner. It's the main flaw of A Time For Killing.These are not John Ford type cavalrymen. You've got some real lowlife specimens on both sides Timothy Carey on the Union side and Max Baer, Jr. on the Confederate. Both are really into combat and killing, Baer who one remembers as the amiable dunce Jethro Bodine in The Beverly Hillbillies really surprises you with his role. In a small part as a Union lieutenant is Harrison Ford years ahead of his first big break in American Graffiti.Dick Miller and Kay E. Kuter play a pair of Union soldiers who aren't exactly the greatest of patriots. Their characters are for comic relief, but in the grim proceedings of A Time For Killing, their comedy while not bad is definitely out of place.A Time For Killing had some potential, but in the end I think the plot situation is really ridiculous and wastes a lot of talented people.

In 1865, somewhere out West, around Las Cruces, a band of Confederate prisoners led by George Hamilton escape from a Yankee fort with missionary Inger Stevens as hostage. They head for the safety of Mexico. They are pursued by a unit of Federal soldiers led by Major Glenn Ford. By the time the end rolls around, all the men of both sides have either been killed or have run away except for Hamilton and Ford, who shoot it out over the outraged honor of Inger Stevens.Now, there's a certain dramatic potential in a story like this, and the director, Phil Karlson, who has done some brutal work elsewhere, starts it off well. In the opening scene, a rebel prisoner has killed a guard while trying to get out and he is about to be shot by a firing squad. But the end of the war is near. Everyone knows it. And the squad balks. So the Commanding Officer turns the rifles over to the Colored Troops, as they were called, and orders them to fire at the prisoner. The nervous squad of ex-slaves has never handled rifles before and mostly they miss. The wounded prisoner cries out, "I'm still alive." They reload and fire. Once again they only wound the tortured man, who screams and laughs. The scene is excruciating.From there on, it's pretty much downhill. The usual problem is that cliché is piled upon cliché. Here, it's that the narrative itself falls apart, not so much because the conventions are too strictly observed but because the writers seemed to be seated on a runaway wagon.That Southern Captain -- Hamilton -- is a proud man and a determined one. "This war will never end," he mutters several times, a gentleman warrior. Yet, when he's alone with Inger Stevens, he slaps her around, rips her dress off, runs his spur along her naked flesh, and savagely rapes her. Whose breath blew out the light within this brain? But then nobody's motivations are entirely clear. They aren't ambiguous, as they are for you and me. They're muddled and conflicting and almost drawn up in order to suit the demands of the situation. Example: Glenn Ford is leading the pursuit but he's firm in his decision to not chase them beyond the Mexican border. Not even the pleas of the battered Inger Stevens, the now-debauched missionary and nurse, will sway him. Yet, later, when one of his men is killed, he abruptly changes his mind and charges towards the final confrontation. The dead man was not particularly important to Ford or to the plot. That is, he wasn't Ford's cousin or son or anything. So the newly formed engram is left unexplained.The movie is "routine" by default. It doesn't carry with it the burden of ordinary stereotypes. It opens up a whole new package of problems involving mediocrity.The period detail is carelessly handled. The mob of Confederate prisoners wears new boots. By the end, any attempt at realism is tossed out the window. The muzzle-loading rifles of the opening scene are soon replaced by single-shot breach-loading carbines. And in the last scene, Winchester repeating rifles are used. No one ever pauses to load -- regardless of the weapon.The musical score is by Mundell Lowe, a decent guitarist, but it's terrible. From the beginning, we're subject to the kind of theme song common to the period, with lyrics. "A man's gotta ride home. But home is nowhere...." Something like that. The rest of the score would have provided a typical and uninteresting background for a shot of cars whizzing back and forth across the George Washington Bridge.It's not worth going on about.

Despite his advancing age, Glenn Ford made a number of westerns during this period, this one being one of his weakest. It does have an eccentric cast, most notably George Hamilton, who doesn't fit at well here. It's not that he can't act, but his look and demeanor come off a bit too "nice" for a character who should be meaner and grittier. Oddly, he has much more screen time than Ford, though maybe that's for the best since Ford seems a bit bored and uninterested in the little we see of him. It's not like the script is inspired or anything, giving us weak characters, unfunny comic relief (despite some brutality shown or implied several times), and even offensive racial stereotypes. Not to mention an underwhelming ending that at the same time feels unfinished. The production quality is also surprisingly cheap and sloppy at times, not just with some incredibly bad editing, but with obvious post-production shots and sequences shot in a studio instead of outdoors on location. Probably wasn't the inspiration for the movie "The Hunting Party" made several years later, but who knows.

If only for it's unusual cast, this Civil War western revenge saga merits watching one time. Unfortunately, there isn't a great deal more about it to recommend as it is uneven and unsatisfying for the most part. Stevens plays a missionary (complete with bleached-out blonde hair and '60's eyeliner) who's visiting her beau Ford at a cavalry outpost where he's holding Confederate Captain Hamilton and others prisoner. Soon after she leaves, Hamilton and a cache of his men revolt and escape. They capture Stevens and kick off a chase across the desert to Mexico with Ford in pursuit. Of main interest is the oddball cast which includes Ford (who, at 51, sure was dragging his feet in marrying Stevens!), Hamilton (his tan completely in place and with his helmet hair and come 'n go accent, a very unlikely Confederate prisoner of war!), Baer, jr (giving quite possibly the worst performance ever captured on film as a lunatic soldier who giggles when killing and fights incessantly with everyone), Armstrong (trading in his sword and sandals), Stanton (long-time character actor who appeared in many cult favorites), Peterson (fourth-billed former child star who has little to do but represent innocence) and Harrison J. Ford (hardly onscreen as a heavily side-burned Union soldier.) The film starts out with an incongruent theme song which is abruptly cut short by the action of the plot. This sets up a consistent pattern of odd music cuts and choppy editing (the music in this film is FAR too over-emphatic and insistent, not to mention repetitive.) There are some okay action sequences and some decent scenery and occasional periods of dramatic interest. They are often undone, however, by some really bad supporting cast members and awkward writing and direction. There's a Union officer with a thick New York accent, a pair of nitwit, supposedly amusing, but actually deadly unfunny soldiers who keep interrupting the drama with their awful shtick and then a passel of chatty cantina whores. The all time worst acting honor, though, goes to Baer, jr who is so relentlessly bad that it actually hurts to watch him. He's a lunkheaded, unbalanced giant whose penchant for violence is not as shocking as it is annoying. The actor claims that playing on "The Beverly Hillbillies" type-cast him, but he seems here to be unable to play anything better. The "comic" relief in the film (which couldn't be any less amusing) is at great odds with the rather visceral violence and cruelty of the rest of the film. It's all put together so amateurishly and with so little regard for nuance or real feelings that it hardly matters. Thus the opportunity to see some name/cult actors in a tough little western remains the primary attraction.