Hang 'Em High: the Clint Eastwood primer

Hang 'Em High (1968), Clint Eastwood's first American western after the Sergio Leone trilogy, contains many of the motifs recurrent in Eastwood movies of the following decades, particularly his action movies and Westerns.

The lawman who clashes with the law
Eastwood's Marshal Jed Cooper repeatedly disagrees with his boss' idea of justice, at times seeing it as too lenient, at others too severe. This conflict is further played out in the Dirty Harry movies.

Delivering prisoners against great odds
Jed's cross-desert trek with three murderous cattle rustlers and no backup sets precedent for elements of Coogan's Bluff, Joe Kidd, The Gauntlet, and In the Line of Fire.

Back from the dead — for vengeance
Jed Cooper is left for dead twice‚ at the lynching that opens the film and the saloon shootout later on. Both times Cooper surprises his would-be assassins by reappearing and taking revenge, either with badge or gun. Other Eastwood characters make similar death-defying comebacks, symbolic or otherwise, in High Plains Drifter, Sudden Impact, Pale Rider, and Unforgiven.

Sex crime
Rachel Warren, Jed's love interest, is on constant watch for the men who raped her years ago. She looks at every prisoner brought before the judge, hoping one day she will see her assailants hang. Similarly victimized characters — several of them prostitutes — appear in The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact, Tightrope, and Unforgiven.

The Clint Eastwood Repertory Company
Several actors appear frequently in Eastwood's movies. Hang 'Em High features regulars Pat Hingle (The Gauntlet, Sudden Impact) and Jack Ging (Play Misty for Me, High Plains Drifter).

Dirty Harry's race for a life

Dirty Harry: the race begins

"All right, police officer, this is how we play. I bounce you all over town to make sure you're alone. No car. I give you a certain amount of time to go from phone booth to phone booth. I ring four times. You don't answer by the fourth ring, I hang up and that's the end of the game. The girl dies." With those instructions from a sniper named Scorpio, Detective Harry Callahan sets off to deliver $200,000 ransom to save a kidnapped 14-year-old girl in a suspenseful foot race through San Francisco in Dirty Harry (1971).

Filmed on location, Dirty Harry showcases many San Francisco landmarks, several of which are used in this sequence. The Google map below shows all of Harry's stops as he runs from phone to phone trying to keep pace with Scorpio's game. Click on the map markers to see a movie still of that location. Zoom into "street view" and you'll get to examine some of the surroundings seen in the film — the marina, Forest Hills Station, the hamburger stand at Aquatic Park, and the big cross in Mt. Davidson park where Harry and Scorpio ultimately meet, for better or worse. While an exact street route is never detailed in the film, the lines on the map show the minimum distance between locations, all but one of which Harry travels on foot.


View Dirty Harry's Race for a Life in a larger map

For more information on the shooting locations of Dirty Harry, see the excellent Dirty Harry Filming Locations.