Directed by Allan Dwan
Screen Play by Steve Fisher
Photographed by Reggie Lanning
Film Editor: Fred Allen, ACE
Special Effects: Howard and Theodore Lydecker
CAST: John Lund (Lance Horton), Brian Donlevy (Charles Quantrill), Audrey Totter (Kate Quantrill/Kitty McCoy), Joan Leslie (Sally Maris), Ben Cooper (Jesse James), Nina Varela (Mayor Delilah Courtney), Jim Davis (Cole Younger), Reed Hadley (Bitterroot Bill Maris), Frank Ferguson.
Allan Dwan approached Woman They Almost Lynched (1953) as a parody. As he told Peter Bogdanovich, “If you treat that seriously, where would you be?”
Released a few months before Nick Ray’s Johnny Guitar (1954), and from the same studio, Republic, Dwan’s picture is just as personal. To me, it feels like he’s trying to see just how much he could get away with, really biting the hand that was feeding him. Maybe he was. His time at Republic was almost up, and he’d soon begin a terrific run with producer Benedict Bogeaus.
Olive Films has announced Woman They Almost Lynched for DVD and Blu-ray release in January. It’s good to see Olive come through with another key Republic title. As a huge fan of Dwan’s late-period work, I’d put this on the esential list. (At the same time, Robert Aldrich’s World For Ransom, released by Allied Artists in 1954 and starring Dan Duryea, will hit the streets.)
50 Westerns From The 50s. 
Really looking forward to this one!
Hats off to Olive Films! This is just the sort of film many of us who read this blog have been waiting for. Let’s all buy a copy and encourage them to speed up their release schedule of missing Republic titles. Great stuff!
Essential Dwan? I’m there!
Note to the elusive “Lone Pine Laura”
John Lund and Joan Leslie in the same film….this one has just gotta
make your day! 🙂
Lone Pine Laura is “Oregon Laura” this weekend…quick check-in from our trip to say I’m absolutely thrilled about this film, love the cast! Going to be such fun to see it!
Side note, I should be back to blogging and email sometime Sunday! 🙂
Best wishes,
Laura
There has been lots of previous talk here of Olive possibly releasing
HELLFIRE.
I for one don’t recall this ever being mentioned,wrong though I may be.
I do know that Olive are planning to release HELL’S FIVE HOURS
not a Western,but a maniac with a bomb thriller.
The star trio of Stephen McNally,Coleen Grey and Vic Morrow means
that this film is of great interest to me at least.
Directed by the totally unknown Jack L Copeland,his sole feature,in
fact.The film was photographed by the great Ernest Haller.
You really cannot go wrong with the Dwan film,it’s one of his best Westerns.
The guys certainly take a back seat to the strident gals in this one!
Sensational artwork on the Olive release BTW.
At any rate it’s great to see Olive speeding up their forthcoming releases.
Also up on Classicflix another eight vintage titles from Uinversal Vault.
No Fifties Westerns this time but some really rare and sought after
films
Universal Vault seem to be back with a bang,there has been a whole
flood of releases from them in the past few months.
Things are certainly looking up for fans of vintage films;I only wish that
I could say the same about our bank balances!.
In the early days of the Olive/Republic DVD announcements, Hellfire and The Last Command were on the list.
A while later, along with some other titles, they were not longer listed as part of that long-term dateless release roster.
You’re right, there’s been some excited stuff released and announced lately.
Thats very interesting.
They also announced A MAN ALONE which they later withdrew due
to “quality” issues.
The same thing happened to two Paramount A Westerns WARPATH
and THE SAVAGE.
I wish some of these films could surface on an Olive DVD-only imprint,
say “Olive Lite” or better still an MOD series.
Then we might get an opportunity to see some of the lesser known
Republic titles as well as the Allied Artists and RegalScope films that
Olive could source.
Certainly the quality would be far better than the “off air” versions of
these films some of us have been able to uncover.
I notice through Amazon USA that there seems to be several
more titles in the recent batch of Universal Vault releases not yet
mentioned on Classicflix website.
Of interest to readers of this blog is a release of UNION PACIFIC which
has only been available on a De Mille set.
Certainly UNION PACIFIC is the best of De Mille’s Westerns and the
version that surfaced in Spain several years back was fine.
I really don’t understand how Universal can release a batch of some
20 films and not include a Fifties Westerns,after all it was very much their
“bread and butter” during that time.
I’m not too bothered by this as most of those films that I want have
been released in Europe, and as I have mentioned before it’s just
great to see this series back in business in a big way.
It would be great,however to see Universal release several of
their fine Fifties Westerns that have never appeared anywhere
on the planet,so far.
I am thinking about the three missing Joel McCrea titles namely
SADDLE TRAMP,THE LONE HAND and BLACK HORSE CANYON.
Also a release of RAILS INTO LARAMIE is way overdue!
The Warner Archive Facebook page changed and I prefer the old
version where you could request stuff and they replied about possibly
releasing it.
Now you can subscribe to their Newsletter,but being based in the UK
I can’t get that.Anyway some fellow has commented on how happy he
is that a Dick Foran Western Collection seems to be on the way!