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Hang 'Em High was his first revisionist Western since Leone and it came right before his long collaborative partnership with Dirty Harry helmer Don Siegel on six films over 10 years. High also served as the springboard for The Malposa Company, his production company. Later that year, he would endorse Richard Nixon for President and the actor's openly Republican politics would become inescapably tied to every role he took from then on.
Marshal Jed Cooper, the lawman Eastwood portrays in Hang 'Em, doesn't believe in politics at all; he just believes in the law. Less than 10 minutes into the film, Jed is subjected to a kangaroo court by nine citizens who believe they've found the man who killed a local cattle rancher and his wife before taking off with their herd. They leave him swinging from a branch alongside a river with a noose around his neck, secure that their justice was righteous.
It isn't until a week later that those in the hanging party hear that one of their compatriots has been killed in a gunfight against a marshal. It turns out that Jed was saved by another local lawman (Ben Johnson) and was immediately set free by Judge Fenton (Pat Hingle, giving one of his strongest performances) who deputized him almost immediately and sent him out after the men who hung him. Some men turn themselves in; others run away. But four of them decide that their only real choice is to kill him.
As much as it is about a manhunt, Hang 'Em doubles as a discussion on corporal punishment and lawmaking as theater. Fenton is a veiled pantomime of the 19th century 'Hanging Judge' Isaac Parker, who sent 79 people to the gallows. Jed argues that there are extenuating circumstances in a few cases, but the town loves a good hanging and the story of Jed's lawful vengeance is a big hit with the 'devout' community. There is no little amount of irony in the town's rendition of the Christian hymn 'Shall We Gather by the River?' before hungrily feasting their eyes on the hangings.
Hang 'Em High is high entertainment but it lacks inventiveness and virility, especially in its technical specs. Post directs it competently enough but leaves the real coup to his stable of actors and the whip-smart script by Mel Goldberg and producer Leonard Freeman. Inger Stevens gives melancholic shading to Jed's love interest, who nurses him back to health after he is gunned down in the local brothel. Bruce Dern is all cocky menace as the most remorseless of the hanging party, and Ed Begley adds a magisterial pomposity to the role of the hanging party's leader.
Though not high-minded debate, Hang 'Em certainly counts as a solid victory lap. At the end, Fenton asks Jed to sign a piece of paper -- whether it was a studio contract or not, we'll never know -- that ensures that he will bring back the missing members of the party that hung him. Whether the Judge is a benevolent, merciful lawman is of little importance. Like Eastwood, he knows what brings people back to the show, and that's all that matters.
