The Ballad of Cable Hogue

Cable Hogue is a prospector left to die in the desert by two partners who take his supplies and his canteen. After days of walking, he stumbles onto a spring, and the water turns out to sit beside a stagecoach route, which gives him an idea for a living. He builds a stop for travellers, charges for what they drink, and settles into a new life with Hildy, a prostitute from a nearby town. His plans for the men who abandoned him are complicated by the arrival of a preacher and, eventually, by the coming of the automobile, which threatens the stagecoach trade his livelihood depends on.

Sam Peckinpah directed and produced the film, which followed The Wild Bunch in his filmography. John Crawford, Gordon T. Dawson and Edmund Penney wrote the screenplay, and Jason Robards plays the title role, with Stella Stevens as Hildy, Slim Pickens as Ben Fairchild, David Warner as Joshua, and L.Q. Jones and Strother Martin as the two partners. The film was released in March 1970 and runs 121 minutes.

Made for about four million dollars, it returned roughly five million worldwide, a modest result for a Warner Bros. Pictures release. On IMDb it holds 7.2 from around 11,000 votes, and on TMDB 7 from 231 votes, while a critics' rating of 6.9 from 17 reviews places it close to the audience scores.