Underrated, overlooked gem from director John Frankenheimer has Gregory Peck in fine form playing Tennessee sheriff and family man in a depressed hillbilly town falling for Tuesday Weld, the comely daughter of a moonshiner. The sheriff, torn by sexual longing and responsibilities--and throwing all morality out of his path--strikes a subtle arrangement with the mountain clan to continue seeing their daughter if they keep their business under-wraps...but is this girl just stringing the lawman along? Frankenheimer bookends the film with a collage of sorrowful faces (scored with music by Johnny Cash) and the effect is a bit pretentious (it seems like a put-on); however, the director's dramatic compositions (helped immeasurably by David M. Walsh's superlative cinematography) overcome this arty overreaching and actually take on some meaning. Alvin Sargent's screenplay, adapted from Madison Jones' book "An Exile", is literate and engrossing, and the obtrusiveness of that stilted opening (as well as Cash's songs, pushed too far out in front) can easily be forgiven. Sexual obsession wears surprisingly well on Gregory Peck, and when he asks Weld to run away with him, you believe it. Both performers are terrific (even Peck's arched eyebrow and granite jaw work well for him here) and the supporting cast is equally solid. Atmospheric and charged with emotion. *** from ****

This film had the potential today's something interesting, but unfortunately, the line is drawn at the very beginning and it leads into the bottomless lake where you find the abandoned house where Sheriff Gregory Peck stores his married younger girlfriend (Tuesday Weld). The screenplay by Alvin Sargent is mainly as fault as is the casting of Gregory Peck, usually so great, but far too classy to be playing a county Sheriff who gets his groove back by getting into the sack with the younger woman.

He's already married to Estelle Parsons (a completely wasted cameo),but not happily so, and when he encounters Weld and her younger brother Joy driving, he gives her a piece of his mind, as well as something else. Ralph Meeker plays a local bootlegger who is already in trouble and ends up involved in the murder of a federal agent that Peck becomes an accessory in. This is a weird little film that is messed up by a ridiculous story where even the performances can't help.

There's a ypung Charles Durning as Peck's deputy, Jane Rose as the station receptionist and Lonny Chapman as the federal agent. There's also a series of vocals by country western legend Johnny Cash that is supposed to guide the plot along which includes the great title song. But these sequences really do nothing to move the story forward and ultimately this ends up being a missed opportunity, and a very disappointing one for director This film had the potential today's something interesting, but unfortunately, the line is drawn at the very beginning and it leads into the bottomless lake where you find the abandoned house where Sheriff Gregory Peck stores his married younger girlfriend (Tuesday Weld). The screenplay by Alvin Sargent is mainly as fault as is the casting of Gregory Peck, usually so great, but far too classy to be playing a county Sheriff who gets his groove back by getting into the sack with the younger woman.

He's already married to Estelle Parsons (a completely wasted cameo),but not happily so, and when he encounters Weld and her younger brother Joy driving, he gives her a piece of his mind, as well as something else. Ralph Meeker plays a local bootlegger who is already in trouble and ends up involved in the murder of a federal agent that Peck becomes an accessory in. This is a weird little film that is messed up by a ridiculous story where even the performances can't help.

There's a ypung Charles Durning as Peck's deputy, Jane Rose as the station receptionist and Lonny Chapman as the Federal investigator. There's also a series of sequences with song sung by the legendary country singer Johnny Cash which includes the fabulous title song, but unfortunately those sequences really do nothing to move the plot forward, just distracting the viewer in an attempt to make them think that it's better than it is. It ends up being a truly disappointing film in the credits of director John Frankenheimer, and one of the few films of Gregory Peck's whete he seems out of his element.

Moral ambiguity would never have been a problem for Atticus Finch, which is why it was so disconcerting to see Gregory Peck get entwined with a hillbilly moonshiner's daughter portrayed here by Tuesday Weld. I wouldn't say that the story lacked credibility entirely, but can you just imagine something like this occurring for real with an otherwise upstanding citizen/sheriff and a gal who could pass for his daughter? I suppose it's happened before, but man, how would one look in the mirror in the morning?

The soundtrack, mostly performed by Johnny Cash, lends particular resonance to the story. Being a fan, I was somewhat surprised that the only song I'd heard before was the title tune; all the rest complemented the story well but don't appear on any of Cash's big hits albums. The one that really clicked for the conflicted Sheriff Tawes (Peck) was 'Face a New Day Dawning', one of it's lines described his angst in relation to his marriage to Ellen Haney (Estelle Parsons) - "She knows that something's wrong and I don't care". You could feel the palpable tension in the sheriff who didn't even try to sort out his feelings once the young temptress made her move.

The one scene that creeped me out though was the tease that occurred by Alma's (Weld) bedside when her father Carl (Ralph Meeker) sidled up along side her to offer comfort. If he'd have kissed her I think I would have jumped out of my chair. There was this feeling I had throughout the picture that some form of incest might have been going on, but it was more provocative to offer it up as a possibility rather than a fact. Could you just imagine the sheriff if that had been the case?

With the character of the Federal man Bascomb (Lonny Chapman),I had to chuckle a bit as it brought me back to my childhood days reading the L'il Abner comic strip. Exposing moonshiners for unpaid taxes was always a favorite theme, and would have been that much more comical here if someone had called Bascomb a 'revenooer'. Why didn't someone think of that?