This is a collection of media from the initial runs of "Day of Anger" (1967) in the Pacific Northwest. This was a second feature with "The Grasshopper" in Seattle with no pictorial ads, so nothing will be pictured.
Click on images for larger versions.
Day of Anger (1967)
“Day of Anger” is one of those westerns that pretends it is interested in justice while quietly savoring the grime beneath it. The film watches a dusty frontier town rot from the inside, a place where the powerful keep their boots clean by grinding everyone else into the dirt. At the center is a young outcast who has been treated like a walking reminder of the town’s hypocrisy, a boy forced to sweep floors and empty spittoons while the so-called respectable citizens sneer at him. His world shifts when a seasoned gunman rides in with the kind of calm menace that suggests he has seen enough human ugliness to stop pretending it can be fixed. Their relationship becomes the film’s real engine, a slow burn mentorship that feels less like guidance and more like a test of how much corruption a person can absorb before they start mistaking it for strength.
The film’s cynicism is baked into every frame. It treats morality as a luxury item, something only the comfortable can afford, while everyone else scrambles for scraps of dignity. The older gunman carries himself like a man who has long accepted that the world is ruled by whoever is willing to shoot first, and the younger man learns quickly that respect in this town is just another word for fear. As the boy gains skill and confidence, the film quietly asks whether he is becoming liberated or simply inheriting the same rot that poisoned the men before him. It is a coming-of-age story stripped of sentiment, where growth is measured in bodies, and the cost of self-worth is paid in gun smoke.
What makes “Day of Anger” linger is the way it exposes the town’s moral bankruptcy without ever sermonizing. The so-called pillars of the community are revealed as petty tyrants hiding behind their own rules, and the gunman’s arrival simply forces their cowardice into the open. The film understands that violence is not a disruption to this society, but its natural language, and every exchange between mentor and student feels like a reminder that power is always transactional. By the time the story reaches its inevitable reckoning, the film has already made its point: in a world built on humiliation and control, the line between hero and villain is mostly a matter of who is holding the gun.
Director: Tonino Valerii
Writers: Ernesto Gastaldi, Tonino Valerii, Renzo Genta
Stars: Giuliano Gemma, Lee Van Cleef, Walter Rilla
April 29, 1970 ad (Portland)
April 29, 1970 ad (Portland)
May 1, 1970 ad (Portland)
May 1, 1970 article (Portland)
Day of Anger (1967) poster
Day of Anger (1967) trailer
