Queimada! / Hang ‘em High Rare Double Bill Quad Poster

I thought it was about time to feature this extremely rare UK poster. It is something of a curiosity, as I have never seen these two movies paired up on any European or American posters but other than on this UK Quad. Perhaps it was the idea of United Artists in the UK? I have absolutely no idea if this was a country wide release or just limited to London and the surrounding Home Counties? However, one has to assume it was wide enough to warrant having a cinema poster produced in the first place… It is hard to narrow down an actual release date, and the evidence available is also contradictory. I have only seen this for sale once, and the information for it is dated as 1969. It seems to me that this is a simple case of looking up both films and dating it accordingly with what was the last film (of the two) to be released. As Queimada! (Aka Burn) was 1969, voilà – you suddenly have a date for the poster. If only it were that simple? Of course, a closer look at the poster reveals that this date is also quite impossible. The Eastwood image used is actually of Dave Garver from Universal’s 1971 psychological thriller, Play Misty for Me. If that was not a huge enough error in itself, it does beg the question of how the concept of this poster ever came about in the first place. A United Artists double bill using a Universal studios image of Eastwood? It was not as if U/A was short of Hang ‘em high images. On the contrary, the original Hang 'em high promotional campaign was loaded with an abundance of available stills…

It certainly remains something of a mystery. However, just to dot the I’s and cross the T’s (with what we have), I wanted to present the poster here and at the same time compliment it with a review of each film from the London based Time Out Group. It’s not the most complete answer or the definitive solution – but it will have to do, at least until the genuine story finally surfaces.

Queimada!

Pontecorvo's memorable sequel to Battle of Algiers sees Brando in finely ambiguous form as the drunken, cynical Sir William Walker, a British agent sent to the Caribbean island of Queimada in the mid-1800s to stir up a native rebellion against the Portuguese sugar monopoly; ten years later, he is forced to return there to destroy the leader he himself created, in order to open up trade with Britain. Falling between epic adventure and political allegory, the film is occasionally clumsily structured and poorly focused; but Pontecorvo, working from a script by Franco Solinas, provides a sharp, provocative analysis of colonialism, full of telling irony, bravura set pieces, and compelling imagery, while Brando's stiff-lipped performance, emphasising his character's confused mixture of dignity and deceit, intelligence and evil, determination and disillusion, never allows the allegory to dominate the human content. A flawed but fascinating film.

Hang ‘em High

More interesting as a way station in Eastwood's career than for anything intrinsic to its lawman/vigilante scenario, this was his first American Western after the spaghettis. Made by his own company, Malpaso, with an old 'Rawhide' director on board (Eastwood is said to have shot some of it himself), the film anticipates the obsession with the dichotomy between natural and legal justice. Saved by chance after being summarily strung up as a presumed rustler and left to die, Eastwood sets out to avenge himself on the nine men who constituted the lynch mob and left him with a scar on his neck.