Director John Huston, 1972, Powerhouse Films
97 minutes
Leonard Gardner’s novel was published when he was 26, before he turned it into a screenplay for John Huston’s film of the same name. It takes its title from the elation itinerant workers express after earning a few dollars picking onions and asparagus, or shaking walnuts down from trees in the farms surrounding Stockton, a dingy small town in California. The town itself, seen in an opening montage to the strains of Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’, is a succession of Skid Rows, with one of the few escape routes being via the boxing ring. Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) was a promising fighter until his eyes were cut (illegally, by a razor blade concealed in the glove) during a bout in Panama. His trainer Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto) had sent him there, being too tight with money to make the trip himself. Now the wrong side...
I’m afraid this isn’t one of our four free articles available in full, which are set out in the first two rows of the ‘Magazine’ page.
Please click here to find them.
To buy a digital version of this issue for just £2.99, click here
