THE HATFIELDS AND THE McCOYS

US, 1975, 75 minutes, Colour.
Jack Palance, Steve Forrest, Richard Hatch, Karen Lamm, Joan Caulfield, James Keach, Robert Carradine, Gerrit Graham, Morgan Woodward.
Directed by Clyde Ware.

The Hatfields And the McCoys? is a vigorous and grim telemovie. It re-creates the atmosphere of the Civil War and post-Civil War period in Virginia and Kentucky. It shows the life in the backwoods and the hills and the strange feuds that grew up between the families with its vicious vengeance. Feuds last over many decades. There had been a previous film, Rosanna McCoy?, treating the same situation in the early fifties. The Lolly Madonna War also shows something of the same hatred in the hillbilly families but was set in this century. A strange postscript to the American heritage of the West.

1. The quality and style of this television movie? Presentation of themes for home audiences? The techniques of television for the movie?

2. The use of locations, Kentucky and Virginia, the recreation of the nineteenth century in the Hillbilly world, the Hillbilly music, the presentation of an American way of life? Audience interest in this?

3. The narrative and the structure of the film: the presentation of the feud as history, the explanation and instruction of the audience, the observation of the two families and the way of the feud?

4. The significance of the feud: the nature of hatred, its lingering over time. its explosiveness and irrationality, its impact on individuals and on families, the devestating and destructive effect? Ways of reconciliation? How much insight into the nature of a feud?

5. The Civil War background, the representatives of North and South, the hostility from the war carrying over, jealousy and rivalry? The significance of the initial score with the deer? Its symbolism and its use at the end of the film? Discussions of venison, pork, sharing of food? Varying tastes? Contrasting ways of life?

6. The transition to 1880: the families settled in Kentucky and Virginia, the river separating them? The hardships of the way of life, their pioneering? The Hatfields and their family, the hard work, the sons? Suspicions? The McCoys? and the empire that they were building up? The older generation and the provocation? The symbolizing of this enmity in the dance. the food at the dance?

7. The lyrical contrast between Johnson and Rosanna’s love and the hatred?

8. How well did the film present the hostilities, the details of provocation, the using of the law, the attempts to establish order and yet the vigilante approach for example the hanging of Cottenhead, the imprisonment of Walter?

9. The presentation of the battles? The cons and their hostility, sieges? Rosanna letting Johnson through?

10. The focus on the Hatfield family, the reporter from New York, the meal and the explanation and the photograph? Hatfield and his going into the mountains to think? The family joining? The build-up for confrontation? The parallel build-up with the McCoys?

11. The importance of Randall and Devil Anse thinking out a personal encounter to solve everything? The commonsonse wisdom of the two older men? The way that they represented the families and their decisions to be law?

12. The amateur nature of the fight between the two and their comments to each other, their tricks? The presentation of the ultimate futility and the value of their reconciliation?

13. Interest in the story as a piece of Americana, nineteenth century America and pioneering, the universal values of hatred and love, the petty nature of feuds and yet the devestating effects?