Walter Hill Movies
With his lean but bold and visually powerful approach, filmmaker Walter Hill's career proved that action films can be smart, stylish, and distinctive, and his movies put a fresh spin on the traditional themes of Westerns, crime dramas, and even buddy films
The son of a riveter who worked in shipbuilding, Hill was born in Long Beach, CA, on January 10, 1942. He briefly... (read more) followed in his father's blue-collar footsteps, earning his living in oil drilling and construction, before focusing his career on the arts. Hill studied drawing for a spell in Mexico, and later enrolled at Michigan State University, where he received a degree in Journalism. In time, he developed a passion for filmmaking and moved back to California, where he earned his first movie credits as an assistant director on such pictures as The Thomas Crown Affair and Take the Money and Run. Hill next worked as a screenwriter; two films were based on his scripts in 1972: the dark crime drama Hickey and Boggs and Sam Peckinpah's adaptation of Jim Thompson's novel The Getaway. Hill's taut, muscular screenplays, sometimes written in blank verse, earned him a potent reputation in the industry, and, in 1975, he landed his first assignment as a director when he brought his own script, Hard Times, to the screen with Charles Bronson and James Coburn in the leads. While his next project as a writer/director, The Driver, earned a cult following, Hill's third feature really put him on the map. The Warriors earned both rave reviews and controversy; the tale of a New York street gang making its way home through unfriendly territory was accused of inspiring a number of violent incidents at theaters showing the film. However, it also earned a handsome profit, allowing Hill to take on two more ambitious projects: The Long Riders, a period Western in which a number of criminal siblings join forces, and Southern Comfort, an atmospheric suspense film about men on Army Reserve exercises who discover they're fighting a real war. The director then scored a blockbuster with the Eddie Murphy/Nick Nolte comedy 48 Hours. His subsequent movies tended to be more cult-oriented than bona fide hits, but Hill's sharp visual style and tough, street-smart scripts kept him in demand, and he earned some of his strongest reviews in years for his 2002 boxing-behind-bars drama Undisputed.
In 1979, Hill moved into producing, working behind the scenes on the sci-fi smash Alien, and helped produce most of his own films, as well as the successful HBO series Tales From the Crypt. He also helped end the career of the infamous and imaginary director Alan Smithee; Hill was hired to step in as director on the troubled sci-fi epic Supernova shortly before shooting began, but opted out of the project before editing was completed, and requested that his name be removed from the film. Since the Director's Guild of America's registered pseudonym for dissatisfied filmmakers, Alan Smithee, had become common knowledge in the wake of the comedy An Alan Smithee Film: Burn, Hollywood, Burn, a new assumed name was created to accommodate Hill -- Thomas Lee -- and the name Smithee was officially retired. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
Bullet to the Head
R 2013
A cop and a killer forge a shaky partnership to find out who killed their partners in this throwback buddy action flick starring Sylvester Stallone, and directed by vet...
Prometheus
R 2012
A team of space explorers embarks on a fantastic voyage to the edge of the universe after making a profound discovery that hints at the true origins of the human race in this...
Becoming John Ford
2008
Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Nick Redman details director John Ford's remarkable stint at Twentieth Century Fox in an intimately detailed documentary that pays...
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem
R 2007
Visual effects specialists Greg and Colin Strause both make their feature directorial debut with this no-holds-barred monster mash that attempts to set itself apart from the...
Broken Trail
2006
Sideways star Thomas Hayden Church appears alongside Academy Award-winner Robert Duvall in a dramatic mini-series shot in the classic western tradition. The year is...
Directed by John Ford
2006
Acclaimed director Peter Bogdanovich updates his 1971 documentary Directed by John Ford for this film of the same name, produced for the Turner Classic Movies cable...
Deadwood: Pilot
2004
On the night that Sheriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and his friend and business partner, Sol Star (John Hawkes), plan to leave Montana for Deadwood, with plans...
Alien vs. Predator
PG13 2004
Directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, Alien vs. Predator follows billionaire Charles Bishop Weyland (Lance Henriksen) and his team of drillers, scientists, and...
Deadwood [TV Series]
2004
Forget Gunsmoke and Bonanza. The HBO series Deadwood was as close to the "real thing" as any Western fan was ever going to see on television -- and in its pursuit...
Undisputed
R 2002
Director and screenwriter Walter Hill returns to one of his favorite themes -- desperate and violent men using force to escape from an unforgiving environment -- in this...
Ritual
R 2001
An unemployed New York doctor with a suspended license and few prospects for the future travels to Jamaica to care for the ailing brother of a wealthy landowner, only to make a...
Howard Hawks: American Artist
1997
This British-produced documentary offers an insightful portrait of American filmmaker Howard Hawks, whose remarkable five decade long career encompassed some of Hollywood's best...
Alien Resurrection
R 1997
Two centuries after Ellen Ripley's death, doctors aboard the space station Auriga clone her using a blood sample taken from Fiorna 161, in hopes of harvesting the queen embryo...
Last Man Standing
R 1996
The traditions of the western and the gangster film meet head-on in this dark crime drama. Jericho is a small town in Texas that in the 1920s looks much like it did in the...
Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood
R 1996
In this satirical horror-comedy, a gumshoe investigates a combination TV ministry/whorehouse/vampire infestation. After bounty hunter Vincent (Phil Fondacaro) unearths...
Wild Bill
R 1995
Maverick writer-director Walter Hill's version of the famous Wild Bill Hickok legend is a dreamscape western that is told entirely in flashback. Hickok's friend Charley...
Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick
1995
Narrated by actor Alec Baldwin, this documentary profiles the adventurous, contentious, and very talented director William Wellman (1896-1975). Ambulance driver for the...
Demon Knight
R 1994
This first theatrical feature spun off from the television series Tales from the Crypt (which was in turn inspired by the infamous EC horror comics of the 1950s) concerns a...
The Getaway
R 1994
The Getaway, a remake of Sam Peckinpah's excellent escape thriller of the same name, adapted from a story by Jim Thompson, is the story of ill-fated romance on the run....
The Fugitive
PG13 1993
This 1993 box-office smash partly adheres to the 1960s TV series on which it is based and partly goes off on several tangents of its own. Harrison Ford stars as Dr. Richard...