Walter Hill (filmmaker) - 1980s

1980s

In 1980, Hill directed his first official Western, The Long Riders, which cast real-life acting brothers (the Keaches, Carradines, Quaids and Guests) as historical outlaw siblings (the James, Younger, Miller and Ford brothers).

A year later, Hill took a Western approach to Southern Comfort, an intense Deliverance-style thriller about a group of U.S. Army National Guardsmen (including Keith Carradine, Powers Boothe and Fred Ward) on weekend maneuvers in the Louisiana bayou who find themselves fighting for survival in the swamps after offending some local Cajuns. The film was seen by many as an allegory for America's involvement in Vietnam.

In 1982, Hill enjoyed a major box office success by teaming a young Eddie Murphy with Nick Nolte for the film 48 Hrs. It was Murphy's first film. Clint Eastwood was originally lined up to play the cop and Richard Pryor the convict, but Eastwood wanted to play the criminal instead and dropped out of the project with Pryor following suit soon afterward.

Hill was one of the three originating producers of the blockbuster Alien series of films. He rewrote the script for the first production (with David Giler), co-wrote the story for Aliens, the second film in the series, and co-wrote (again with Giler and also Larry Ferguson) the screenplay for Alien 3.

In 1984, he directed a stylish "rock 'n' roll fable", Streets of Fire. While initially a box-office failure, it gained a greater following in subsequent years (as many of Hill's films have). He directed Pryor along with John Candy in the much more mainstream 1985 comedy Brewster's Millions, following this with Crossroads, an atmospheric, non-violent Hill film about a young blues guitarist (Ralph Macchio) and a legendary harpist (Joe Seneca) on a road trip.

In 1987, he returned to hard-edged action with Extreme Prejudice, a contemporary Western based on a story by John Milius and Fred Rexer, which starred Nolte, Boothe, Michael Ironside and Clancy Brown. A tale of childhood friends who are on both sides of the law, it includes a showdown that lovingly pays homage to Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

Hill returned to the buddy-cop genre with Red Heat (1988), a sort of Glasnost-era reworking of 48 Hrs. with Arnold Schwarzenegger as a stoic Soviet cop who travels to Chicago to catch a Russian drug-dealer (Ed O'Ross). Schwarzenegger is partnered with a wisecracking American cop (James Belushi), who is as laid-back and mouthy as his Soviet counterpart is taciturn and humorless.

Hill ended the 1980s with Johnny Handsome (1989). An unusual crime story starring Mickey Rourke, Morgan Freeman and Lance Henriksen, it was a cynical, downbeat tale that the director saw as a re-examination of the film noir genre.