A Time for Killing (1967)

★ 4.6 1h 28m IMDb
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During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers escape from a Union prison and head for the Mexican border. Along the way, they kill a Union courier bearing the news that the war is over. Keeping the message a secret, the captain has his men go on and they soon find themselves in a battle with the Union search party who also is unaware of the war's end.

A Time for Killing

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Cast

Glenn Ford
Glenn Ford as Tom Wolcott Died 2006 · Quebec City, Quebec, Canada Glenn Ford (May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006) was a Canadian-born American actor from Hollywood's Golden Era, with a career that spanned seven decades. Despite his versatility, Ford was best known for pl...
George Hamilton
George Hamilton as Dorrit Bentley Age 86 · Memphis, Tennessee, USA George Stevens Hamilton is an American film and television actor. He began his film career in 1958 and although he has a substantial body of work in film and television he is, perhaps, most famous for...
Inger Stevens
Inger Stevens as Emily Biddle Died 1970 · Stockholm, Sweden Inger Stevens (born Ingrid Stensland; October 18, 1934 – April 30, 1970)[1] was a Swedish–American film, television, and stage actress. Stevens was born in Stockholm, Sweden, the eldest child of Per...
Paul Petersen
Paul Petersen as Blue Lake Age 80 · Glendale, California, U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Paul Petersen (born September 23, 1945) is an American movie actor, singer, novelist, and activist. Primarily known for his character-type roles in the 1960s and...
Todd Armstrong
Todd Armstrong as Lt. 'Pru' Prudessing Died 1992 · St. Louis, Missouri, USA Todd Armstrong was an American actor who appeared in ten films and several television series. He is best known for playing the title role in the cult classic Jason and the Argonauts, after which his c...
Max Baer Jr.
Max Baer Jr. as Sgt. Luther Liskell Age 88 · Oakland, California, USA From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Maximilian Adalbert "Max" Baer Jr. (born December 4, 1937) is an American actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. He is best known for playing Jethro Bodine...

Audience Reviews

John Chard 4/10 Jan 27, 2019
Protracted mess that's nearly saved by the high action quota.

Confederate POWs escape a Union camp and make for the Mexico border chased by Union troops. This in spite of the fact that the war has just been declared over...

Directed by Phil Karlson with Roger Corman on hand for uncredited duties, this stands up as an odd, interesting, but messy Western. The production problems involved do show, for we get a pic that more or less consists of similar scenes strung together as a whole. The pursued can be found squabbling and bickering, in fighting and macho posturing, while the pursuers do the same.

No opportunity is wasted for some violence on tap, lots of gunplay, bloodletting and noise, while sexual aggression rears its ugly head. Sadly it just comes off as trying to keep the pic interesting, to stop the viewers from falling asleep as the narrative fails to offer anything of substance. Oh it's trying, the futility of war and its corruption of the soul are bubbling away, but it never bears out, buried under the urgency for an action scene and awful over acting (Max Baer Junior is appalling).

In its favour is the cast list, which contains Glenn Ford, George Hamilton, Inger Stevens, Timothy Carey, Kenneth Tobey, Harry Stanton, Harrison "Indiana Jones" Ford and Todd "Jason Of The Argonauts" Armstrong - amongst others. It's a strange roll call befitting the strangeness of the piece, compounded by Mundell Lowe's awfully intrusive musical score - on the evidence of this it's not hard to understand why he had such a short and mundane career as a composer. The Utah and Arizona locations however are a treat, so props to Kenneth Peach, his work deserves a better picture.

A Time for Killing (AKA: The Long Ride Home), more a curio piece than a genre pic to avidly seek out. 4/10
CinemaSerf 5/10 Jan 28, 2024
After what can only be described as one of the most ludicrous firing squad scenarios I've ever seen, the irritated confederate prisoners under the command of "Bentley" (George Hamilton) decide that they are going to avenge themselves on their blue-shirted counterparts and so they duly kill some guards, trash the fort with the cannon and skedaddle. "Maj. Walcott" (Glenn Ford) is duly dispatched to apprehend them and what ensues now is quite possibly the worst main-stream western I have ever seen. Ford just doesn't look like he cared and no amount of facial hair is going to lend enough gravitas to the perpetually underwhelming Hamilton as the story heads down the same wagon trail as quite literally thousands of it's civil war cinematic forebears. The production is almost as bad as the script, which is back of an envelope stuff - and the contribution from Inger Stevens as the kidnapped, wronged and vengeful "Emily" (the fiancée of "Walcott") is just bizarre. Keep an eye out for a young-ish Harrison Ford if you can be bothered sitting through this, and you may also spot Todd Armstrong - having fallen quite a way since "Jason and the Argonauts" (1963) but it's a long and unfulfilling old slog riddled with banal dialogue to an ending that I could have done with about seventy minutes earlier.

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