[4] In 1946, bigoted, draft-dodging, gold-digging Henry Warren and his heiress, land-owning wife Julie Ann, are determined to sell their land in rural Georgia to owners of a northern canning plant, but the deal rests on selling two adjoining plots as well, one owned by Henry's cousin Rad McDowell and his wife Lou, the other by black farmer Reeve Scott, whose ailing mother Rose had been Julie's wet nurse.

Otto Preminger was shown the galley proof of the 1,046-page Gilden manuscript by his brother Ingo and, fully expecting it to be another Gone with the Wind, purchased the film rights to the novel for $100,000 eight months prior to its publication.

[5] Because he admired his screenplay for the Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird, Preminger hired Horton Foote to adapt the Gilden book, which the author thought was "embarrassing," with "no genuine Southern flavor at all."

Preminger replaced Foote with Thomas C. Ryan, who worked for him as his chief reader and was familiar with the type of material his employer found appealing.

[6] Preminger wanted to shoot the entire film in Georgia, and in November and December 1965 he visited the state to scout locations, but a union dispute changed his plans.

The New York union, which had jurisdiction over Georgia, demanded crews be paid double for any filming after 4:00 pm, an added expense Preminger knew would be prohibitive.

Baton Rouge and its environs were selected, and Callahan's crew began planting cornfields, erecting shanties, and constructing a dam and reservoir containing 17.5 million gallons of water.

[8] Matters came to a head when a convoy of cars and trucks returning to the hotel through a heavily wooded area one evening became the target of a volley of sniper gunfire.

In it Reed characterized the director as an autocrat who was losing his grip, quoted Michael Caine as saying, "He's only happy when everybody else is miserable," and claimed Griggs had been fired by Preminger "in a moment of uncontrolled fury."

[17] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times called the film "a frustrating case, not good but not particularly bad, with a smokescreen of controversy surrounding it and obscuring its real faults.

"[19][20] Time observed "Obviously, Hurry Sundown was intended as a paean to racial justice, but Producer-Director Otto Preminger chooses strange ways to display his big brotherhood.

"[22] Time Out London wrote that "The Preminger flair which made The Cardinal so enjoyable, despite its hackneyed script, seems to have deserted him in this lumbering melodrama, put together with the sort of crudely opportunistic style which alternates scenes of the rich folks parading in a stately mansion with shots of the poor sitting down to their humble fare while thumping mood music makes sure you get the point.

God, sex, class, guilt, moralising and Negro spirituals are all thrown into the stew, and you'll come away feeling that although it's worthy in its ideals, it could have done with a touch less overblown melodrama.

"[24] The Legion of Decency gave the film a "C", "Condemned" rating, citing its "superficial and patronizing in its treatment of racial attitudes and tensions" and also its "frequently prurient and demeaning ... approach to sex".