Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave
Hank Williams: The Show He Never Gave
| 30 December 1980 (USA)
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This is a lonely New Year's Eve for Hank Williams as he spends it en route to a huge New Years Day concert in Ohio. Hank Williams died that night on the road. A fictional biography is shown in flashback.

Reviews
BlazeLime

Strong and Moving!

Lawbolisted

Powerful

Stevecorp

Don't listen to the negative reviews

Humaira Grant

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

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justincward

There's 'Lost Highway', which isn't actually a very good play at all, there's 'Your Cheatin' Heart' (an Elvis movie with no Elvis because Tom Parker wanted royalties) starring George Hamilton who does his best with a truly atrocious script, and there's this, which is the one to see. Sneezy Waters depicts Hank doing the best bar gig in the history of music anywhere, of any genre. It's atmospheric, authentic and well staged, and Sneezy's Hank impression is very good - though Sneezy's far too old and his voice, while he gets the yodels OK, is not strong in the lower end. You can hear him struggling at times, which makes the audience's constant ecstatic reaction a bit strange. But not many actors can sing and vice versa.I found the quality of the video on the Echo Bridge DVD to be barely acceptable - played on a MacBook, it looked like it had been videoed off a TV screen. The scenes in the car are only just watchable, and the audio is somewhat muffled. That said, in a way this helps with the authentic atmosphere.

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zerobeat

I could have given this 10/10 if the version I saw wasn't so dark (some of the scenes were virtually all blackened out). I recognize the older Canadian production values here, which reminds me of "Going Down The Road" and various other CBC or NFB productions. There's a kind of unglamorous and unadorned realism that makes it all so wonderfully poignant.If I didn't know any better, I could have assumed an actual live show was being filmed with multiple cameras if I only saw a few minutes here or a few minutes there. Sneezy Waters is absolutely brilliant, both as a musician and as an actor. Loved the old guy doing the cagean dancing!

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sl7lg25

This is a movie that should be in the Smithsonian. It's a profound reflection of a time period that produced some of the best American music ever. I was very surprised to read at the end of the film that Hank Williams was only 29 when he died and that he had written over 700 songs many of them classic. I was born in '48 so he was not of my generation but after the 60's rock and roll died I came to appreciate the greats of the past like Hank and Bill Monroe. I think Sneezy Waters did an incredible job of acting. The writing was right on target for humor and the soulful journey that Williams must have experienced. He seems to be searching for a peace that eludes him. I didn't know he had written "I saw the light", which he sings here.

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pekka.hallikainen

I saw this film on the Finnish TV in the late 1980´s and haven´t seen it since. Sneezy Waters don´t look much like Hank Williams, but when the film was over, I almost believed, that I had seen Hank himself acting and singing (and not just play back). The story begins as Hank sleeps in the back seat of his Cadillac on the way to Canton, Ohio, and dreams of a gig that would be perfect for the audience and for himself. That dream reflects his severe problems in real life. Sadly, that gig never came true. Hank died that night, on New Year´s Eve 1953. This little film is a beautiful tribute to the Late Great Hank Williams.

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