Product: Hangman's Knot (1952)
Rating: 2.0
Horrendous body doubling of Scott and Marvin.
With the monthly release of classic films on DVD now all but dead outside of expensive DVD On Demand archive programs which are currently only available outside the US via inflated Amazon prices and extortionate shipping costs and with Sony Home Entertainment being the only studio left releasing box sets every few months (I thought I'd be dead by the time the Budd Boetticher Collection actually got released.), I finally have breathing space between releases to start reducing a considerable pile of as yet unwatched DVD's stacked on shelves gathering dust.Hangman's Knot was the second in a Randolph Scott double bill I got around to watching with the first being Santa Fe. Hangman's Knot would be the more enjoyable of the two for me. I do agree with some of what is said in the 5 star and 4 star reviews regarding plot and performances expressed by other reviewers, so I don't need to repeat it here. For my viewing enjoyment, I would have to consider Hangman's Knot to be an average 3 star film. To give it anything above 3 stars would be putting it next to other Scott outings such as The Tall T, Riding Shotgun, Ride Lonesome, Seven Men From Now, and a few others which I don't feel Hangman's Knot deserves.So why only the 2 star rating? I had to take a star off because of the absolutely horrendous stunt doubling during a major fight sequence between Randolph Scott and Lee Marvin. I can't understand how this has not been brought up in other reviews because it's so plainly obvious. I can't image that even back in 1952, audiences would not have noticed such obvious stunt doubling, especially so when sitting in front of a massive cinema screen.Around the half way mark, Scott and Marvin come to blows, a release of tension between these two characters that had been building for the proceeding 40 minutes. When the camera shot switches to the stand in stunt men during the fight, it is embarrassingly obvious that it is neither Scott nor Marvin on the screen.You can clearly see the faces of the stunt actors. Scott's double looks to be around 30 years old standing in for Scott who was 54 years old at this time. The director made no attempt to mask the fact that these two men wearing the same clothes as Scott and Marvin are stunt men. Their faces are in full view for the duration of the fight. This spoiled my enjoyment of what was up to that point a good Scott western. Also off note is that the exact same thing also happens in Santa Fe when Randolph Scott's stunt double steps in during a fight scene on a moving train and it is clearly obvious that it is not Scott.As previous reviewers have said, there is still much to enjoy in Hangman's Knot if you can ignore the doubling of the fight scene. Scott plays the stand up honest man with his own code of honour that he portrays so well in so many of his westerns and which is why I find him so enjoyable to watch on screen, but, I just can not get past that fight scene.Hangman's Knot is for it's second half, a siege film with Scott and several others trapped in a wagon station house, fighting off a posse bent on getting the gold Scott and his gang now possess. Another reason for my low rating is, near the end of the film, the posse, tired of waiting for Scott and the others to come out of the station house, decide to burn them out. I found myself asking why they hadn't done this much earlier when the posse first got to the station house at the very beginning. The posse had shown earlier that they didn't care about innocent passers by getting killed by there bullets, they wanted the gold. Perhaps I am picking to much at Hangman's Knot but I feel that this is a valid point and seems to me to be lazy plotting.A disappointed Scott fan.