The Hallelujah Trail (1965) on Netflix
Approved19652h 45mComedyWestern
Denver fears a whiskey shortage, so the Wallingham Freighting Company sends forty wagonloads of whiskey to the town. Temperance leader Cora Templeton Massingale means to destroy the cargo.
- Netflix2.4/5
- IMDb6.4/105,014 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes33%
Trailer
Plot summary
The winter of 1867 looks hard, and the mining town of Denver dreads running out of whiskey. On the advice of Oracle Jones, a local guide and seer whose visions come only when he is drinking, the town arranges a shipment of forty wagons of whiskey from the Wallingham Freighting Company. Young Captain Paul Slater of the United States Cavalry is ordered by Fort Russell's commander, Colonel Thaddeus Gearhart, to escort the train. The hired Irish teamsters want whiskey rations or they will strike. Cora Templeton Massingale, twice widowed and a temperance campaigner, learns of the cargo and sets out with her followers to destroy it, escorted by a second cavalry column under a reluctant Gearhart. A Denver militia led by Clayton Howell, and Sioux chiefs Five Barrels and Walks-Stooped-Over, also want the shipment.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Hallelujah Trail (1965)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Stuntman Bill Williams was killed on November 13, 1964, while performing a stunt in which a wagon went over a cliff during The Hallelujah Trail; the shot was kept in the finished film.
- James Garner, Lee Marvin and Art Carney were all initially offered roles in the film that ended up going to Burt Lancaster, Brian Keith and Donald Pleasence.
- Actor John Moya, announced in July 1964 as making his feature film debut, was stung by a scorpion on his first day in front of the camera and had to be hospitalized.
- Conceived as a comic epic long enough to need an intermission, the film ran 181 minutes until audience responses at screenings in Minneapolis and Detroit triggered a cut to 165 minutes.
- The film was shot mostly around Gallup, New Mexico, from July to November 1964, but heavy rains there forced some shots to be filmed in Hollywood, with interiors at the Paramount and Goldwyn studios.
