When people mention Sam Peckinpah, the film most mentioned is The Wild Bunch. While I'm a big fan of that very violent film, I find out that most people don't even know about The Ballad Of Cable Houge, which I feel is his finest film.
The film is about a would be prospector named Cable Houge (Jason Robards in his best performance and that's saying a lot), who is left to die out in the desert with no water by his too partners (Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones). After almost dying out in the desert Cable actually finds water. He then buys the land and makes it a stop in the desert for stagecoaches to stop and refresh the horses. He becomes friends to a traveling and lecherous preacher (well played by David Warner) and a sweet prostitute, Hilly (played by the sweet faced Stella Stevens). But what Cable is mainly doing is lying in wait for the time that he runs into his former partners again.
It's a simple fable told with very little violence, and it's well told. It's definitely not the film that you would expect from the man who made the Wild Bunch. Warner Bros. who released it didn't know what to do with it and just threw out at the public with very little publicity, and the film never go the attention that it should have. Hopefully future film scholars with rediscover this gem and lift it from obscurity.
The film is about a would be prospector named Cable Houge (Jason Robards in his best performance and that's saying a lot), who is left to die out in the desert with no water by his too partners (Strother Martin and L.Q. Jones). After almost dying out in the desert Cable actually finds water. He then buys the land and makes it a stop in the desert for stagecoaches to stop and refresh the horses. He becomes friends to a traveling and lecherous preacher (well played by David Warner) and a sweet prostitute, Hilly (played by the sweet faced Stella Stevens). But what Cable is mainly doing is lying in wait for the time that he runs into his former partners again.
It's a simple fable told with very little violence, and it's well told. It's definitely not the film that you would expect from the man who made the Wild Bunch. Warner Bros. who released it didn't know what to do with it and just threw out at the public with very little publicity, and the film never go the attention that it should have. Hopefully future film scholars with rediscover this gem and lift it from obscurity.