This Forgotten '60s Clint Eastwood Western Is Streaming For Free

Clint Eastwood is such an iconic figure when it comes to Westerns that genre classics like "High Plains Drifter," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," and "Unforgiven" hardly scratch the surface of his tenure in the saddle. For every "Pale Rider," there's an underseen gem such as "Bronco Billy" that doesn't receive nearly as much attention. Whether you're a Western aficionado or a casual viewer looking to fill in an Eastwood blindspot, Tubi has you covered this month with 1968's "Hang 'Em High."

The Ted Post-directed film opens with Jed Cooper (Eastwood) finding himself at the mercy of a lawless vigilante posse run by Captain Wilson (Ed Begley). Believing he's directly responsible for the death of his cattle's previous owner, the nine men string the retired U.S. Marshal up from a tree and leave him for dead. But Cooper is far from arriving at the pearly gates: he's not only rescued and cleared of all charges, he gets to witness the real murderer being hanged from the town square. Seeing the anger behind his eyes, Judge Adam Fenton (Pat Hingle) offers Cooper the opportunity to bring in the lynching posse alive under the guise of the law. But the newly appointed Marshal of Fort Grant comes to learn that the line between justice and revenge is a thin one.

"Hang 'Em High" may not be one of Eastwood's very best works (although we included it on our list of Eastwood's 10 best Westerns), but it's an important one that deserves to be recognized as the start of what would become one of the most prolific movie careers of all time.

Prior to the mid-1960s, most American audiences were familiar with Clint Eastwood from his eight-season stint on "Rawhide" as ramrod Rowdy Yates. The CBS-TV Western wasn't just responsible for putting Eastwood on the path to start directing, but it got him recognized by Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone. Their collaboration resulted in three of the greatest spaghetti Westerns ever made: "A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly." 

By the time the famed trilogy made its way to the United States, Eastwood had become an international superstar who changed the way Westerns were made. It was only fitting that he would capitalize on his newfound silver screen fame with a Western made back home. "Hang 'Em High" is notable for being the first film produced under The Malpaso Company, which Eastwood has used for most of his projects ever since. 

It makes sense why Eastwood chose Ted Post to direct his first American Western, considering they had previously worked together on 24 episodes of "Rawhide." While Post was a good journeyman director who knew how to get the best profile of the infamous Clint squint, he's far removed from the controlled chaos of Leone's filmmaking that made his leading man a screen legend. In some respects, "Hang 'Em High" exists in a middle ground of emulating the spaghetti Western while being shot, edited and paced like an episodic television series. It helps, however, that Eastwood had graduated beyond the naivete of his Rowdy Yates days, as "Hang 'Em High" presents its flawed protagonist with a compelling moral dilemma to lean on.

Everything about "Hang 'Em High" suggests a typical revenge story, with Clint Eastwood's Marshal Cooper going on a bloody killing spree against the lynching party. Leonard Freeman and Mel Goldberg's screenplay, however, puts him in the position of carrying out his retribution by picking up the badge and doing it the "right" way. Where the film shines is in the relationship between Cooper and Pat Hingle's Judge Fenton, who was loosely based on the real-life "Hanging Judge," Isaac Parker, of Fort Smith, Arkansas. Fenton rules with an iron fist, bringing law and order to the Oklahoma territory in the hopes that his actions will help its chances of statehood. Tensions arise when Judge Fenton is quick to praise his new Marshal's catches, but doesn't allow him to speak up on behalf of two boys who saved his life from the murderous cattle rustler Miller (Bruce Dern).

"Hang 'Em High" is at its best when Marshal Cooper contemplates the effectiveness of doling out true justice in an imperfect system, especially one that employs a routinely barbaric form of capital punishment. He can't even bring himself to watch the prolonged mass hanging ceremony, itself a standout sequence. It's a shame the film falls short of making any meaningful conclusions about the flawed nature of lawful murder, marking it up to something along the lines of "well, someone's gotta do it." It prevents "Hang 'Em High" from achieving greatness.

With that said, this 1968 Western is well worth seeing for the morally conflicted lawman persona Eastwood would develop into the "Dirty" Harry Callahan character and beyond.