Charlton Heston plays the title character, an aging cowboy who finds himself broke, so accepts a job as a lineman on a cattle ranch. On a routine run, he discovers a young mother and her son, who have(unknowingly) taken shelter in his cabin.
YEAR OF RELEASE: 1968 WRITER/DIRECTOR: Tom Gries COUNTRY: USA RUNTIME: 1 Hour 50 minutes LOCATIONS: Bishop & Inyo County, CaliforniaTHE PLOT: Charleton Heston plays loner Will Penny, an aging cowboy who takes a winter job riding line on a vast ranch. He runs afoul of a family of psychotic rawhiders who leave him to die in the wilderness.
This is a very good movie indeed. Charlton Heston is a cowhand pushing 50 (pretty ripe back in those days) who ends up sharing a small shack for the winter with a young woman and her son.
Aging and illiterate cowpoke Will Penny (a fine and credible performance by Charlton Heston) gets left out in the wilderness to die by a gang of ruthless outlaws led by the crazed Preacher Quint (a perfectly slimy portrayal by Donald Pleasence). Penny is nursed back to health by the lovely, yet willful Catherine Allen (well played by Joan Hackett).
What a great Western! Excellent dialogs, acting, cinematography, soundtrack, mood, story.
If you were a mid-19th century Ohio farmer with a wife and half-grown boy and you were moving to Oregon to homestead, would you go ahead alone to 'get things started' and arrange for your wife and boy to come later via the 6 month long Oregon Trail, with an unfamiliar male guide/companion, not part of a wagon train, starting late in the warm season, so that a winter stay over in some unknown place was essential for survival? I didn't think so!
The first surprise of the movie occurs in the opening credits with the words 'Introducing Lee Majors'. Sometimes one loses track of time and you take it for granted these actors have been around forever.
A mature range-wandering loner named Will Penny (Charlton Heston) gets a job as cattle drive cowboy when he encounters his isolated cabin in high mountains is already occupied by a love-hungry mother (Joan Hackett) and her young son , they have appropriated when their guide to Oregon has deserted them. Too ashamed to kick the frontier husbandless and child out just as the cold winter of the mountains sets in, he lets to share the booth until the spring slowly thaws.
"This here's the line rider's shack"Set at the turn of the 20th century, "Will Penny" unveils the ways of survival that settled the unconquered lands east of the continental divide. Charlton Heston portrays Will Penny, a man on the cusp of the lines that ride between two worlds.
