VHS : There Was a Crooked Man...
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com:
Shelved for more than a year and released as an un-holiday-like afterthought at Christmas 1970, this sardonic comedy-cum-Western-cum-prison movie immediately dropped off the radar and has scarcely been heard of since. We can understand that. By their own admission, hotshot screenwriters David Newman and Robert Benton (just off Bonnie and Clyde) and veteran director Joe Mankiewicz (more typically associated with the likes of All About Eve) never found the right focus for their mix of sociopolitical satire, frontier bawdiness, and brutal Western action. Still, the very unevenness makes for fascinating tensions, and the myriad insights and moods created by a cast comprising Kirk Douglas, Henry Fonda, Hume Cronyn, John Randolph, Warren Oates, and Burgess Meredith more than repay a visit.
Douglas plays one of those charming bastards at which he excelled--here, Paris Pittman Jr., a bandit capable of seducing virtually anyone into doing his will. Pittman has a fortune in gold stashed somewhere. Inconveniently, he himself has been stashed in the territorial penitentiary in the middle of the desert, so he begins conniving to escape. This means betraying everyone in range, including the liberal-minded warden (Fonda) who's determined to redeem him. The stellar adversaries are ideally cast, with Fonda cannily subverting his own image (as he recently had in Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West). Cronyn and Randolph are priceless as 'an old married couple,' and Oates is heartbreaking as a congenital loner who thinks that, in Paris Pittman, he has at last found a friend. --Richard T. Jameson
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - That pretty schoolteacher..
On one of the discussion boards was a question about the pretty schoolteacher being carried along with the rioting mob, losing another piece of attire every time seen (yelling "warden," asking for help) for part of the riot sequence and then disappearing. And mention of seeing a still picture where she wore a hat, boots and a smile while running through the desert. Question was about the editing.
An acquaintance saw the sneak preview of the picture in Long Beach while it was still being edited ... Read More
Rating:  - JOSEPH L. MANKIEWICZ, OPUS 19
***** 1970. Produced and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. How to transform the screenplay of a western dealing with a daring prison escape into a smart and satiric film about honesty and prison reforms ? Well, just ask Mankiewicz, one of the top directors of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The quality of this WB release is average with a good sound and so so images. Too bad that the featurette is mainly about Michael Blodgett's first serious step into cinema. But, nevertheless, this release stays as an indispensable ... Read More
Rating:  - Kirk Douglas plays a bad guy as does Henry Fonda
Actually I thought that this was a different movie before I viewed it.
I confused this one with the movie 'Scalawag' also starring Kirk Douglas.
It's an ok movie. so if your a Kirk Douglas or Henry Fonda fan it's worth you while.
Rating: - Good Early Seventies Western From Legends Douglas and Fonda
Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda are two of the Western genre's alltime greats, and seeing them together in a movie like this is always fascinating. Perhaps even more so in a early 70's Western with all of its characteristics, including rampant cynicism, blatant anti-heroism, and surprise endings.
There Was A Crooked Man features Douglas as a bank robber who has hidden his loot away, and then gets caught and sent to prison. In prison, he and the warden form a grudging respect for each other. The warden, played ... Read More
Rating: - Stylish Western
This is a quirky little western with a bevy of interesting characters and a style all it's own. Kirk Douglas is a convicted robber who tries to outwit warden Henry Fonda (and vice-versa) who knows Douglas has a large amount of money hidden in the desert.
This is one of those you love it or hate types of films. It is irreverent, slightly off center and, as I said , quirky. Even the inappropriately contemporary film score, usually out of place for a period western, seems, well, appropriate.
Odd? ... Read More
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