Watch The Ballad of Cable Hogue For Free

best movie i've ever seen.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Uneven but entertaining.Nevada, early-1900s. Cable Hogue (played by Jason Robards) is double-crossed and robbed by his two partners. he is left for dead, wandering the desert without water. However, Hogue manages to survive and sets about restoring his fortunes. He finds water near a main road, buys a small plot of land around it and sells water to passing travelers. He also falls in love, with Hildy (Stella Stevens).Directed by Sam Peckinpah, who gave us The Wild Bunch, Cross of Iron, Straw Dogs and The Getaway. Peckinpah movies are generally known for being violent dramas, with the violence being quite graphic. This movie, however, is more of a comedy than a drama, and thus a bit of a departure for Peckinpah. It still has, at its core, a dramatic plot, one of recovery and revenge, but it is difficult to take seriously with some of the hilarious scenes that we see.Very funny at times, with some wonderful lines and physical comedy. Peckinpah also makes use of the Benny Hill-like sped up footage for comedic effect. If anyone was under the illusion that this was purely a drama, that device would have shattered that illusion.However, as mentioned, it retains a dramatic core and the ending is particularly sombre (and unsatisfying). Therein lies the problem with the movie. One moment its a comedy, sometimes to the point of being quite silly, next it is deadly serious. Very uneven.Still, quite entertaining. Just best to not take it too seriously.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue Directed by Sam Peckinpah 1970 This movie has several things in common with "Once Upon a Time in the West": Similarities in plot i.e. guy marries a beautiful whore and tries to build his own remote desert transportation stop. Both are directed by auteurs with cult followings. Both are deliberately paced and favor atmosphere over dramatic plot development. Both star Jason Robards. Both failed at the box office, but enjoy enthusiastic cult followings today. Neither has Indians (just kidding). Peckinpah is one of the best action directors in the history of cinema, but he also excelled in character study/mood pieces. "Junior Bonner" is a modern Western he directed in a similar style to "Cable Hogue". While I liked "Junior Bonner" and his other mood piece "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid", "Cable Hogue" left me completely mystified. I gave it two out of 10 stars in my IMDb rating. It got skunked in my ranking system with only three points. Only two movies so far have scored worse: "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Duel in the Sun". I found almost nothing to like about this movie. However, I do have a list of criticisms: While I think Jason Robards can be an effective supporting actor, I don't think he can carry a movie as the lead. "Butterfly Mornings, Wildflower Afternoons" may be the worst song ever inflicted on mankind….and I've seen all of Elvis' movies. I hadn't the slightest interest at any point in this movie whether or not Cable got the girl or didn't, was successful financially or wasn't, got revenge on his former partners or didn't, or lived or died. In addition to the excruciating "Butterfly Mornings" love montage, there were a number of other non-sequiturs, including Benny Hill style film speed accelerations, Russ Meyers style closeups of breasts and Cable's death scene. Some claim this is Fellini-esquire. Fair enough. I hate Fellini movies. (That Russ Meyers, though, he had some talent). I've read that this is the finest performance of Stella Steven's career. I agree. Much better than her work in "Girls, Girls, Girls", "The Silencers" and "Slaughter". Check that. We did get to see her nipples in "Slaughter". That remains my favorite Stella Stevens performance. I'm still scratching my head trying to figure out what religion Peckinpah belonged to. He's extremely anti-Christian, but seems to believe in some kind of deity. His confused spiritual life was most likely ruled over by a God named Jack Daniels. I found the co-themes of the "death of the West" and "societal outcasts are really superior to. hypocritical societal snobs" trite and poorly developed. The setting here stretches the limits of the genre "Western". What is it, 1920? This is less of a Western and more of an absurdist romantic comedy with sagebrush and horses for props. Oh, I did like one thing, For once, R.G. Armstrong does not play a crazy Christian. Nice to see him stretching his range a bit.

Cable Hogue gets waylaid in the desert but miraculously stumbles across a hidden oasis right next to the stagecoach trail. He capitalises on this good fortune by buying the land and setting up a travellers' rest stop, and makes friends with Hildy, a hooker, and Joshua, a wandering preacher. But a date with destiny lies ahead …One of the less well-known of Peckinpah's movies, this was the director's favourite. He mostly made two kinds of film; violent, antisocial rants (The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs) and much more mellow, romantic, philosophical pieces (Ride The High Country, Junior Bonner) and this one very definitely falls into the latter category - Cable is an old-time prospector who leads a thoughtful, solitary existence. He doesn't do wrong by anyone, but he looks out for number one just the same. He likes being with Hildy, but he doesn't want to spoil their friendship with ties and rules, much to her regret. He values simplicity and he goes where the wind blows him. Peckinpah's films are full of metaphors - when Cable gets run over by the newfangled motor car, modern times quite literally overcome him and pass him by. Robards is terrific in the lead, at a high point in his career (he made this, C'era Una Volta Il West and Johnny Got His Gun in three years), with great support from Stevens and Warner, and a quartet of Peckinpah's repertory group. Warner is pretty amazing as the libidinous minister without a parish - he was still in his twenties, and had never made a film in America before, but is humorous, commanding, poetic and devilish. Shot in Nevada and around the southwest, with elegant, gentle photography by Lucien Ballard and a jaunty early guitar score by Jerry Goldsmith, featuring some nice songs by Richard Gillis. Nicely written by John Crawford and Edmund Penney, two supporting actors (prolific, in Crawford's case) who don't appear in the movie and didn't write any other films. As with almost all of Peckinpah's work, the film was ignored by distributors. When Warner delivers Cable's eulogy, he could be speaking about Sam as well, "He wasn't really a good man. He wasn't a bad man. But Lord, he was a man !".

This movie was a low point for both Jason Robards and Sam Peckinpah. Major plot points are taken directly from Sergio Leone's masterpiece "Once Upon a Time in the West" (released two years earlier and also featuring Robards): A man finds a watering hole is found in the desert, being the only water for many miles in every direction, he plans to build a 'station' around the hole and to ensure there's a love interest, he falls in love with a prostitute. To this add an intemperate preacher, bad music, silly fast action shots, even sillier T&A shots - and there you go. There is little question why it failed at the box office. The real question is "how did it make it that far?".