Product Description

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 Warner

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #16477 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2006-01-10
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 121 minutes

Amazon.com essential video
What 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

Amazon.com
Here's how director Sam Peckinpah described his motivation behind The Wild Bunch at the time of the film's 1969 release: "I was trying to tell a simple story about bad men in changing times. The Wild Bunch is simply what happens when killers go to Mexico. The strange thing is you feel a great sense of loss when these killers reach the end of the line." All of these statements are true, but they don't begin to cover the impact that Peckinpah's film had on the evolution of American movies. Now the film is most widely recognized as a milestone event in the escalation of screen violence, but that's a label of limited perspective. Of course, Peckinpah's bloody climactic gunfight became a masterfully directed, photographed, and edited ballet of graphic violence that transcended the conventional Western and moved into a slow-motion realm of pure cinematic intensity. But the film--surely one of the greatest Westerns ever made--is also a richly thematic tale of, as Peckinpah said, "bad men in changing times." The Wild Bunch is a masterpiece that should not be defined strictly in terms of its violence, but as a story of mythic proportion, brimming with rich characters and dialogue and the bittersweet irony of outlaw traditions on the wane. --Jeff Shannon

Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid may be the most beautiful and ambitious film that Sam Peckinpah ever made. The time is 1881. Powerful interests want New Mexico tamed for their brand of progress, and Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn) is commissioned to rid the territory of his old gunfighting comrades. He serves fair notice to William Bonney--Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson)--and his Fort Sumter cronies, but it's not in their nature, or his, to go quietly. Peckinpah's theme, more than ever, is the closing of the frontier and the nature of the loss that that entails. But this time his vision takes him beyond genre convention, beyond history and legend, to the bleeding heart of myth--and surely of himself. This is one strange and original movie. In 1973 most American reviewers responded by panning it and deriding its director, whom they saw as having betrayed the promise of Ride the High Country, been swept up in his own cult of violence, and become incoherent as a storyteller. Coherence wasn't helped by MGM's cutting at least a quarter-of-an-hour out of the finished film and removing a bitter, retrospective prelude. Subsequent releases have restored a lot of material, and now there's more widespread appreciation of the depth and power of Peckinpah's achievement. The cast, teeming with fine character actors, is extraordinary, making the gallery of frontier denizens vivid and resonant. --Richard T. Jameson

What 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. 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

Ride the High Country is the one Sam Peckinpah movie about which there has never been controversy--save at MGM in 1962, when a new studio regime opted to dump this beautiful, heartbreakingly elegiac Western into the bottom half of a double-bill. Westerns rarely even got reviewed back then, so it's wellnigh miraculous that critics discovered the movie and raved about it. Newsweek called it the best American picture of the year. Veteran cowboy stars Randolph Scott and Joel McCrea portray aging gunslingers in the twilight of the Old West. The slow-building tension between longtime friends--one still true to the code he's lived by, the other having drifted away from it--anticipates the tortuous personal dilemmas played out to the death by Peckinpah's Wild Bunch, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and Benny and Elita in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. The action scenes are powerful, if only beginning to suggest the radical technique with which Peckinpah would astonish audiences in just a few years. But his feeling for flavorsome dialogue, Rabelaisian humor, and full-blooded character acting is already unmistakable. McCrea and Scott are simply superb. The two proposed that they swap roles before filming got underway, and the question of who got first billing was settled by flipping a coin. Both men retired once the film was in the can. They knew they'd never top it. --Richard T. Jameson

Customer Reviews

Buried Treasure
The Ballad of Cable Hogue is buried treasure - an outstanding film by a legendary director with brilliant performances that is still little known and rarely seen. Sam Peckinpah made it just months after his groundbreaking film, The Wild Bunch, and both films deal with the same topic - the end of the western frontier, although in radically different ways. While The Wild Bunch is a violently realistic film about a breed of western gunmen who had outlived their day, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a stylized fable, by turn tender, dark, comic, and tragic that depicts the last days of another sort of western archetypal man. It may be that the film's resistance to easy categorization (is it a comedy? a tragic love story? a morality tale of revenge? a musical?) is responsible for its continued obscurity, but I find it an element of its greatness, and concur with Peckinpah, who characterized the film as part Keystone Cops, part Sartre's The Fly, and considered it his favorite of all his movies.

There are many reasons to love this film, including its stunning scenery of awesome, big sky desert landscapes, and a unique, lilting soundtrack with songs that become mysteriously etched in your mind. Yet its foremost strength is its brilliant performances from an impressive cast. Jason Robards plays the title role, brilliantly rendering the tough as boot leather yet vulnerable Hogue as charming and totally unforgettable. Stella Stevens delivers the crowning performance of her career as Hildy, a prostitute who aspires to go to San Francisco to become the "ladiest damn'd lady", yet unaccountably falls in love with the desert rat Hogue. Stevens and Robards together create an utterly believable screen romance that not only crackles with passion, but conveys real depths of caring and emotion. David Warner adds color and comic relief to the story as Josh, a lascivious traveling preacher who becomes side-kick, foil, and nemesis to the no nonsense Hogue. Several great character actors all at the top of their form, including Strother Martin, Slim Pickens, and L.Q. Jones, round out this first rate cast.

This DVD release includes several excellent special features. There is a mini feature called The Ladiest Damn'd Lady: An Afternoon With Actress Stella Stevens, in which Stevens talks about her career, Director Sam Peckinpah (she didn't much like him), and her experiences working on The Ballad of Cable Hogue. Also included are trailer galleries from five Peckinpah movies - Ride the High Country, The Wild Bunch, The Ballad of Cable Hogue, The Getaway, and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid. Most importantly, however, is an outstanding commentary track featuring four Peckinpah scholars. Their commentary covers the symbolism and philosophy of the movie, Peckinpah's filming technique, and the movie's relationship to Peckinpah's larger body of work. Unlike many commentary tracks that seem to add little value, this excellent track is both entertaining and useful, and leaves you wanting to watch the movie yet again with the new perspectives you have gained from it.

The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a film that will stick with you, and one you will want to revisit frequently. It is not only my favorite Sam Peckinpah film, it is one of my top five all time favorite Westerns. If your Western collection lacks this quirky gem, it is not yet complete, so go discover it for yourself.

Theo Logos

A brilliant little gem of a movie.
Starring Jason Robards & Stella Stevens and Directed by Sam Peckinpah, The Ballad of Cable Hogue is a brilliant little gem of a movie that somehow never made it onto the national radar screen when it was released. A major departure for Peckinpah, whose forte back then was the ultra violent epic-movies like The Wild Bunch and the highly acclaimed Straw Dogs-The Ballad of Cable Hoague tells the tail of a fellow abandoned for dead out in the western desert who is lucky enough to find the equivalent of an oasis and converts the spot into a way station for the pony express and the stage coach runs of the time. Wonderfully acted by Robards as Hoague and Stella Stevens as the nearby town's "working girl" as his romantic interest, the story is in essence a depiction of western life and the characters of the time.

This was a wonderful vehicle for may well know western character actors of the day: It's full of those sort of actor you recognize in an instant and have no idea what their name is. The story is sweet and engaging and the movie is totally devoid of the violence and gore that Peckinpah was famous for at the time.

So, if you are the sort of person who wants a movie to actually tell a story, actually present real characters, and warm your heart-this is definitely a choice you should make. You will not be disappointed.

Sam Peckinpah's Legendary Westerns Collection Product description.
This upcoming release from Warner bros will contain the following:

-The Wild Bunch Two-Disc Special Edition, Disc 1:

* Commentary by Peckinpah biographers/documentarians Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle
* New digital transfer (16x9 2.35:1)
* Peckinpah trailer gallery
* Languages: English and French
* Subtitles: English, French and Spanish


Special Features Disc 2:

* Never-before-seen The Wild Bunch outtakes
* Additional scenes
* 3 documentaries
o Sam Peckinpah's West: Legacy of a Hollywood Renegade - A feature-length biography of the legendary director, featuring rare film clips, interviews with family and colleagues, and narration by Kris Kristofferson.
o 1996 Oscar Nominee The Wild Bunch: An Album in Montage
o A Simple Adventure Story: Sam Peckinpah, Mexico and the Wild Bunch


-Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid Two Disc Special Edition, Disc 1:

* 2005 Special Edition: (115 Mins.)
* Commentary by Special Edition Producer Nick Redman, Supervising Editor Paul Seydor and fellow Peckinpah biographers/documentarians Garner Simmons and David Weddle
* Peckinpah trailer gallery
* Languages: English and French
* Subtitles: English, French and Spanish (Feature Films Only)


Special Features Disc 2:

* 1988 Turner Preview Version: (122 Mins.)
* Commentary by Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle
* 2 new featurettes:
o One Foot in the Groove: Remembering Sam Peckinpah and Other Things
o Deconstructing Pat and Billy
* One for the Money: Sam's Song
* Languages: English and French
* Subtitles: English, French and Spanish (Feature Films Only)


-The Ballad of Cable Hogue:

* Commentary by Peckinpah biographers/documentarians Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle
* New featurette: The Ladiest Damn'd Lady with Stella Stevens
* Peckinpah Trailer Gallery
* Languages: English and Spanish
* Subtitles: English, French and Spanish


-Ride The High Country:

* Commentary by Peckinpah documentarians Nick Redman, Paul Seydor, Garner Simmons and David Weddle
* New documentary: A Justified Life: Sam Peckinpah and the Hogue Country
* Peckinpah trailer gallery
* Languages: English and French
* Subtitles: English, French and Spanish