Will Penny

Plot synopsis:
Will Penny (Charlton Heston) is an aging cowhand who at the end of a long trail hires on to ride the boundary of a ranch over the winter. He immediately comes across a woman, Catherine Allen (Joan Hackett), and her son Horace (Jon Gries) using one of the remote cabins to over-winter, having been deserted by the guide that her husband paid in advance to lead her and her son over the mountains. Despite his boss' instructions Penny lets them stay in the cabin and gives them a week to move out.
Later, Penny runs afoul of a sadistic family called the Quints, led by Preacher Quint (Donald Pleasence) who is after him for killing one of the Quint sons some time before, defending his comrades. While out checking the territory, Penny is ambushed and savagely beaten up by the Quints, who leave him for dead. Penny manages to drag himself back to the cabin, where he is slowly nursed back to health by Catherine, with whom he has little choice but to stay afterward.
As Christmas and winter pass, the lonely Penny and sexually repressed Catherine fall in love, and Penny begins to develop fatherly feelings towards the young boy Horace. The three have lived together as a family unit, during which Penny has caught poignant glimpses of everything that has been missing from his own nomadic, rootless life. For a while it seems there is a possibility that he can settle down with the woman and child and continue this happy arrangement. Around this time the Quint family bursts into the cabin, forces Penny into hard labor and coerces Catherine into marrying one of the ruthless Quint sons. When two of his fellow ranchers appear just in time to aid his escape from the Quints, they return to the cabin to free Catherine and Horace from their tormentors. At last it seems a happy ending may arrive at the appropriate moment. For part of Penny desperately wants to put down roots and end his lonely existence as an itinerant cow hand. Ultimately, however, Penny realizes that he is simply too old to keep on living like he used to (he is around 50) and too set in his ways to ever settle down in a domestic setting. Deeply regretful about what he is leaving behind, he rides away from the woman and child, never to return.

Tags: revenge, violence

Review:
The tough, lonely life of the cattle drover (as it really was) is briefly related in the ideal opening scene of Tom Gries' "Will Penny" with an aching Charlton Heston compelled, at the end of an exhausting cattle drive, to take a humble winter job in the cold bleak hillside...
He is a "good steady hand" concerned for Mrs. Allen and her son but "bad scared before, and bad sorry after." He is also a helpless man with uncertain future, a sincere cowboy extremely sensitive..."Will Penny" is an extraordinary film...
Not only does it feature Heston's most sincere and sensitive performance, it has a fine supporting cast and is one of the most adult Western scripts ever written...Joan Hackett portrays Mrs. Allen with strength and dignity, never collapsing beneath the strain of her tribulations...
Bruce Dern is equally effective as one of his sons, the psychotic who "handles a knife just fine."Realistically spared, "Will Penny" is a straightforward and honest film, a sincere attempt to recreate the Old West, and, more important, the "mighty good men" who lived therein....
The Inyo County, California locations are wonderful and the cowboys at work scenes are refreshingly honest.The basic storyline serves as a template to work more on character development and the cast (full of western stalwarts) do not disappoint.Charlton Heston as Will Penny is on great form as the vulnerable, middle aged man of the plains.
He and his friends "Blue" and "Dutchy" represent the best principles of old west comradeship and his approach to Mrs Allen and her son "H.G" shows with tenderness what he has craved to have all his life but knows it is too late to embrace.I found Donald Pleasence a bit over the top as the evil "Preacher Quint", but his portrayal is entertaining if nothing else.
Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens and Lee majors all do a good job in support and Joan Hackett is completely convincing as the lone mother in search of a better life.Very much a film for those viewers who like to experience, feel and be touched by a well written story and its characters..
When one of Quint's sons is killed, the preacher vows revenge and we know we haven't seen the last of him.When Will inquires at a roadside inn about the nearest doctor for Dutchy who accidentally shoots himself, he meets Catherine Allen (Joan Hackett) and her young son Horace known as Button (Jon Gries), on their way to Oregon to find her husband.
This outstanding ensemble cast produces a Western that is authentic and intelligent and is probably Heston's best performance of his career.Interestingly, the film opened in the New York's R.K.O. Coliseum at Broadway and 181st Street, a neighborhood theater in which I spent many boyhood afternoons and even worked as an usher.
Joan Hackett is very good as the woman squatter Penny befriends (her on screen son is played by Tom Gries real life son, who is also excellent).
These guys could give the Hammond Brothers ("Ride the High Country") a run for their money.There's also Joan Hackett, in a lovely, subtle, yet solid performance as Catherine Allen , a woman travelling across country w/ her young son, in search of her husband, who had gone on ahead ...through whom Will sees a life he never had..& never thought possible.
A simple tale of an aging cowboy (Charlton Heston) being nursed back to health by a woman (Joan Hackett), and then having to protect her and her young son (Jon Gries, son of the director) from the slimy characters who left him to die, the film is headlined by a wonderful, understated performance from screen veteran Heston, undoubtedly one of his finest.
Donald Pleasence is a delight as always as the sadistic Preacher Quint, and there's good support from Lee Majors (in his major film role), Anthony Zerbe and Ben Johnson (both of whom, sadly, never really get to do much), character actor Slim Pickens in a small role, and Bruce Dern in one of his countless villain parts.
Even more than his Oscar-winning role in BEN-HUR, Charlton Heston's performance in the terribly underrated 1968 western WILL PENNY may stand out as his best.
Zerbe accidentally wounds himself in the shootout; and Pleasance vows to get revenge on Heston after Heston shoots and kills one of his sons (Matt Clark).Separating from Zerbe and Majors, Heston finds employment at the Flatiron spread, led by Ben Johnson, and, unintentionally, winds up protecting a lone woman (Joan Hackett) and her son (John Gries) during the harsh Montana winter and Pleasance's subsequent revenge quest.Superbly directed and written by Tom Gries, who died too soon in 1977, WILL PENNY is a very well made western, albeit somewhat sad in the end (Heston can't marry Hackett in the end, because his age and his sudden, but lamentably too late, realization of what life should be like stand in the way).
Featuring solid performances from other fine actors like Slim Pickens, Bruce Dern, Luke Askew, and Roy Jenson, WILL PENNY is easily one of the best westerns ever made--which somehow seemed to escape Paramount Pictures' notice back in 1968..
She gives a good performance in her role fighting for herself and her child to survive in a rugged winter.Look for some realistic western portrayals from veterans like Ben Johnson, G.D. Spradlin, Slim Pickens, Anthony Zerbe, Lee Majors, Bruce Dern, and William Schallert.Will Penny is very similar to Lee Marvin's classic Monte Walsh.
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.
But when Penny offends a family of outlaws (Donald Pleasence , Bruce Dern) they seek vengeance , come after him and menace his happiness along with the mother and her son.Wonderful performance by Charlton Heston as aging cowboy , he considers this movie his personal best giving a realistic portrayal .
Middle-aged Montana cowboy Charlton Heston (as Will Penny) and his two young partners, Lee Majors (as Blue) and Anthony Zerbe (as Dutchy), are attacked by maniacal preacher Donald Pleasence (as Quint) while hunting elk.
An conceptually interesting ending leaves too much unsaid, and "The Lonely Rider" song lyrics don't help.****** Will Penny (2/16/68) Tom Gries ~ Charlton Heston, Joan Hackett, Donald Pleasence, Jon Gries.
Unfortunately, into this nice little world come Donald Pleasance (as "the Preacher") and his insane children who are hell-bent on revenge and terrorizing Heston and company.This is an exceptional Western because it is unique and defies the usual silly clichés associated with the genre (such as a "perfect" happy ending).
Visually, the film is a standout with gorgeous vistas of snowy landscapes and the chill of winter felt inside the cabin as the man and woman gradually fall in love.JOAN HACKETT is fine as the strong-hearted woman with the boy clinging to her, left behind by her husband and glad for some company when Heston lets them stay with him.
The plot pits Heston, the woman and the boy against these intruders intent on holding them hostage while his sons have their way with Hackett.CHARLTON HESTON and JOAN HACKETT both give strong, believable performances under Tom Gries' direction--and I understand Heston considers it one of his favorite roles.
LEE MAJORS, BEN JOHNSON and SLIM PICKENS round out the supporting cast.The climactic scenes have the sort of resolution that reminds one of SHANE, another great western about a loner who decides he has to be true to his own nature, leaving the story without the usual conventional Hollywood ending.Well worth watching..
A scant two months after the February 1968 release of "Planet of the Apes," Hollywood legend Charlton Heston was back on the big screen in the lesser-known film "Will Penny." Since 1959's "The Big Country" (one of this viewer's all-time faves, though it does not seem to be highly regarded), Heston had only appeared in one other Western, 1965's "Major Dundee," but his work in the '68 oater seems to be generally viewed as some of the finest that he ever gave us.
At loose ends for work, Penny takes a job as a "line rider" for the Flat Iron Ranch, only to find that his lonely winter cabin has been invaded by squatters: a young married mother (Joan Hackett) and her 8-year-old son (Jon Gries, real-life son of the film's director, Tom Gries).
In addition, Lucien Ballard's cinematography and David Raksin's score complement the film nicely.Charlton Heston was at perhaps the most satisfying phase of his acting career: other films of the period include THE WAR LORD (1965), KHARTOUM (1966), COUNTERPOINT (1967) and PLANET OF THE APES (1968); he made a number of Westerns, but three in particular stand out from the lot - William Wyler's THE BIG COUNTRY (1958), Sam Peckinpah's MAJOR DUNDEE (1965) and this one.
Incidentally, the relationship depicted here between a cowboy and a lonely woman living with her young son (who comes to idolize him) was also at the centre of two other fine Westerns I've just watched - HONDO (1953) and THE TIN STAR (1957)!Unfortunately, Gries died at a relatively young age; this was his most substantial feature film, though he later collaborated twice more with Heston on NUMBER ONE (1969) and THE HAWAIIANS (1970)..
Charlton Heston,(Will Penny),"Solar Crisis",'90, made this film a great classic, he portrayed a man in his 50's who never married and worked hard all his life with cattle and was down on his luck.
Familiar western faces in the supporting roles include Joan Hackett and Lee Majors and a who's who of westerns character actors (Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, Anthony Zerbe, Bruce Dern to name just a few).
Aging cowboy Will Penny gets a line camp job on a large cattle spread and finds his isolated cabin is already occupied by a husbandless woman and her young son.The picture was based upon an episode of the 1960 Sam Peckinpah television series "The Westerner" called "Line Camp," which was also written and directed by Tom Gries.
Please watch this movie and see for yourself why Charlton Heston's "Will Penny" is quite possibly the most authentic and true to the "old west" western ever made..
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.
Penny discovers love and a sense of family for the first time in his nigh fifty years of life."Will Penny" gives the viewer a good peek at what it must have really been like to be a cowboy out West in the late 1800s.
Lonesome cowboy Will Penny (Charlton Heston), along with traveling companions Lee Majors and Anthony Zerbe, repel an unprovoked attack by crazed preacher man Donald Pleasance and his grimy sons.
With Zerbe seriously injured, Heston rides on alone followed by the vengeful Pleasance.Will Penny starts off with excellent, picturesque scenes of a cattle drive and rugged outdoor adventure, giving way to tender drama between Penny, young mother Joan Hackett and her boy, that is until the loonies show up again for more action and an exciting, satisfying climax.Pleasance is always a great heavy, as is Bruce Dern who plays one of his sons.
This film was one of Charlton Heston's personal favorites, a change-of-pace drama dwelling on character development and self-preservation instead of the usual shoot 'em ups in western movies.
Heston shows great skill in making this believable.On his way to another job, Penny crosses a truly horrible family, and later, runs into a vulnerable woman, Catherine Allen (Joan Hackett) on her way west with her son.
Until Years Late When it Was Rediscovered and Acknowledged as a Hidden Gem.Charlton Heston's Great Underplayed Performance Enhances the Film Along with Authentic Recreations of Cowboys and Settings that are Unpretentiously Displayed and the Movie Makes No Attempt to Make the Story Mythical.It is Bare Bones Realism with Interesting Folks Placed in a Hostile Environment and Explores the Human Condition of Survival Instincts.
The Villains, Donald Pleasence and Bruce Dern Make Their Presence Felt, and Ben Johnson and Slim Pickens Add Some Gravitas with Not More Than Cameos.There are Other Familiar Faces Like Anthony Zerbe and Lee Majors, but it is Heston, Hackett, and a the Sharply Written Script that Defies Conventionality in Both Story and Structure that Makes This One Special.
Stunningly photographed in widescreen and colour by the great Lucian Ballard the picture was also buoyed by a haunting score from veteran composer David Raksin ("Laura").Aging and illiterate cowboy Will Penny (Charlton Heston) has just finished up helping to bring in the last herd of cattle before winter sets in.
PLOT: Will Penny (Charlton Heston) is an aging cowpoke who runs afoul of a sadistic family of frontier drifters, the Quints (Donald Pleasance, Bruce Dern and Gene Rutherford when he kills one of their clan (Matt Clark) to protect his friends Blue (Lee Majors) and Dutchy (Anthony Zerbe) after the end of a long cattle driver.
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).
The excellent acting by the top-drawer cast holds the picture together: Heston brings a touching dignity and resolute conviction to the deeply tragic and sympathetic character of Will Penny; he receives sterling support from Bruce Dern as Quint's no-count son Rafe, Ben Johnson as tough trail boss Alex, Anthony Zerbe as the amiable Dutchy, Lee Majors as eager young buck Blue, Slim Pickens as irascible cook Ike, Clifton James as crude farmer Catron, and Roy Jenson as mean bully Boetius Sullivan.
Tom Gries directs "Will Penny", an underrated Western which features Charlton Heston in what he cites as his own favourite performance.
Elsewhere Gries focuses less on his plot than he does on Penny's dead-end existence, the cowboy's dim future married to sequences which stress the sheer drudgery and loneliness of life on the plains.7.9/10 – This film is at its best when Heston is brooding on screen.
Writer-Director Tom Gries had a mostly undistinguished and uninspiring career on TV and film,but WILL PENNY is the notable exception.It is all the more surprising that Gries before and after never really approached the depth,style and intelligence associated with this rather splendidly elegiac Western.An ageing,illiterate cowhand,Will Penny (Charlton Heston) approaches the end of typically gruelling contract work before the excesses of Winter draw in,with his immediate future uncertain.He makes friends with some younger workmates,Blue and Dutchy(Lee Majors,Anthony Zerbe),but they become embroiled in a gunfight with some particularly vicious raw-hiders,led by the vengeful Preacher Quint(Donald Pleasence).After managing to find more low-paid work,Will becomes romantically involved with a young mother (Joan Hackett) and her son,with the unpleasant intentions of Quint's brood never far away.WILL PENNY has been rightly praised for it's plausible,realistic details of the harsh,isolated,nomadic life on wilderness-type open plains,beautifully photographed by one of Hollywood's best colour cameramen,Lucien Ballard,one of many Westerns he worked on.There are no shootouts in in sanitised frontier towns here,or pristine-looking saloons,just a few flimsy-seeming wooden buildings with the barest of facilities.Despite these and and other mundane,authentic depictions,Gries successfully makes them mostly engaging,with a solidly laconic,sometimes acerbic script.The granite-jawed Heston made around a dozen or so Westerns (notably Wyler's THE BIG COUNTRY and Peckinpah's MAJOR DUNDEE),but this is probably his best in this genre,and maybe even his greatest film performance.Free of the theatrical,overblown excesses that were prevalent in some of his other big screen vehicles,Heston underplays his role superbly here and produces many effective dramatic moments.He is matched by dignified and equally sensitive performances by Ms Hackett and young Jon Francis (actually Jon Gries,the director's son),with a romance that is convincingly and touchingly developed.Westerners like Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson provide further reliability,with Zerbe and even the usually rather stolid Majors giving fine support as Heston's colleagues.As has been documented by other reviewers,the film's only real negative point is the somewhat miscast Briton Donald Pleasance's overbearing performance as Preacher Quint.This is in curious contrast to Pleasance's other portrayal of villainy around the same time as Blofeld in the James Bond epic YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE.His minimalistic,brooding menace there was far more effective than his rolling-eyed,Southern-accented histrionics in WILL PENNY.In the midst of such meticulously believable incident,Gries comes close to unbalancing all his good work by providing such hackneyed,stereotyped rascals (one of whom includes Bruce Dern in rather over-typical mode),and further strains credulity by a very visible wire when a knife is hurled at Penny.Yet Gries redeems these errors of judgement with a genuinely moving finale,similar to SHANE and in some ways more effective for being done so low-key.The climactic song (performed by Don Cherry) played alongside this coda is by no means at all bad,but a trifle misjudged ;David Raksin's modest yet effective score would've been more apposite.Despite it's minor faults,WILL PENNY is a Western of the top drawer,it's realistic account of the desolate,difficult lives of hard working cowboys and their bleak surroundings always honest,compelling and never dull,and barely lapsing into self-pity.Charlton Heston is said to be very proud of his work here with considerable justification;and we can be grateful Tom Gries made at least one near classic before his untimely death.RATING:7 and a half out of 10..
When he is forced to winter in a snowed-in cabin with a pioneer woman (the wonderful Joan Hackett) and her son, he finds love for the first time in his life, but the tender moments are short-lived as he must fight off the evil "Preacher Quinn," one of the creepiest villains in screen history, played with demonic ferocity by Donald Pleasence (Bruce Dern is one of his sons).
Nevertheless, Penny realizes he could not adapt to another way of life and rides off into the sunset.As a long-time fan of Westerns and Charleston Heston, I was disappointed by this film.