FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Aiden Melton The storyline feels a little thin and moth-eaten in parts but this sequel is plenty of fun.

Calum Hutton It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Jackson Booth-Millard I missed the opportunity to watch this film once, so I rented it on DVD, I recognised it by the image of the leading actor, also directing, with a beard posing behind a hangman's noose, I hoped the film itself would be worthwhile. Basically set in the late 1860s, shortly after the Civil War, in Longhorn, Texas, third-rate outlaw Henry Lloyd Moon (Jack Nicholson) is a convicted bank robber, horse thief and cattle thief. Moon is sentenced to be hanged, to the glee of the locals who gather to watch his execution, a local ordinance dictates that as he has not committed murder, he may be freed if a lady will marry him and take responsibility for his good behaviour. An elderly woman offers to marry him, but dies on the spot immediately, as Moon is dragged back to the gallows, headstrong, genteel Southern virgin Julia Tate (introducing Golden Globe nominated Mary Steenburgen) agrees to marry and take charge of him. Julia weds Moon, intending only to use him as labour in a secret gold mine under her property, they strike up a shaky partnership and he gains her trust, it slowly develops into something more. The local sheriff's Deputy Towfield (Christopher Lloyd) constantly accuses Moon of stealing "his" girl, but there is no evidence Julia has any interest in him, and she offered marriage to Moon herself. It gets complicated when Moon's old gang arrive at Julia's house, she is abstinent, but they introduce her to intoxicating beverages. Julia and Moon are overjoyed when they successfully strike gold, but soon enough the outlaws discover this, Moon schemes to betray Julia and steal the gold., but following a collapse in the mine, he has a change of heart. There is a gun fight between the many men for the gold rush, and in the end, Julia and Moon walk away to make way with their fortune, with the nature of their relationship changed for the better. Also starring John Belushi as Deputy Hector, Danny DeVito as Hog, Veronica Cartwright as Hermine, Richard Bradford as Sheriff Andrew Kyle, Batman's Tracey Walter as Coogan, Ed Begley Jr. as Whitey Haber, Barbara Ann Grimes as Spinster #1, Anne Ramsey as Spinster #2, Marsha Ferri as Spinster #3 and Lin Shaye as Parasol Lady. Nicholson is good as the antihero, this is a good first movie for Steenburgen, and there is fair support from the other recognisable actors, the story is fairly simplistic, a relationship that turns from sour to smooth, a search for gold, and some bandits trying to get their hands on it, the movie may have been a flop at the cinemas, but it is a reasonable and fun comedy western. Worth watching!

classicsoncall Until I saw "Goin' South' the other night, I didn't think Jack Nicholson ever acted any crazier than he did in "The Shining". But he's got that performance topped here as the career outlaw turned anxious husband Henry Lloyd Moon. And if you didn't know any better you might even consider this picture a comedy, some of the dialog and situations are outrageously funny. I had to wonder whether Mel Brooks might have gotten the idea for the hanging horse in "Blazing Saddles" from an opening scene; after that it's just one crazed situation after another. With fellow cast members from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" like Christopher Lloyd and Danny DeVito, the Western town of Longhorn is set on it's ear when Miss Julia Tate (Mary Steenburgen) saves Moon from a severe case of rope burn and attempts to tame her new husband into some semblance of humanity. It just ain't gonna work.

dimplet First of all, Going South is funny. And it is entertaining. So just enjoy the movie and stop analyzing it.This is a bit surprising, given Jack Nicholson's corpus. Look at the list of movies he made, and you will see this is his first comedy; not until Witches of Eastwich, 9 years later, do we see him starring in another comedy. There are comic elements in other movies of his, of course, such as the earlier One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and the bizarre Mars Attacks! But in no other movie does Nicholson play such a purely comedic role, where the movie is dependent on his comedic acting. If you look at his first 10 years of starring roles, from 1969 to 1978, you see an actor demonstrating the ability to handle a wide range of serious roles, who wants to avoid being typecast. Yet he is in some slight danger of typecasting, of playing post-60s hipsters and rather serious characters. Going South broadened his acting palette, and while he did not do much more straight comedy, he employed comic twists to lighten many of his roles, especially in "As Good As It Gets."One of the keys to good comedy that stands the test of time is not going overboard. Nicholson pushes his character to extremes, but avoids crossing the line into shallowness, in part because he gives his character such depth through his fine acting. There is a lot of shallow contemporary comedy out there now, and current actors and directors could learn a lot from watching this movie. Nicholson immersed himself so fully in this role that some viewers seem to assume naively that Nicholson was really like Henry Lloyd Moon, at least at the time. He's an actor! (See The Passenger - 1975.)I'm a bit puzzled by some of the off the mark reviews, which seem to be due in part to judging the 1978 Nicholson by 2008 Nicholson. One "Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine," quite bizarrely complained that in Going South, Nicholson was reusing "faces and attitudes and gestures that we have already seen" ... in later films!Speaking of time travel, Going South is almost a prequel to Back to the Future, Part III, which starred the loony Christopher Lloyd and the lovely Mary Steenburgen in the wild West. Yet Going South was Steenburgen's first movie! Steenburgen delivered her role to perfection. This is interesting given her serious expression opposite Nicholson's antics. I wonder if she had a hard time keeping a straight face? But one of the things that makes this movie work is seeing Nicholson draw Steenburgen in his direction, including sexually and even to taking a drink, and Steenburgen drawing Nicholson toward taking life more seriously. You know this is coming, and in the beginning of the movie you are skeptical, and yet it is done credibly, and with a romantic touch.The scene with the brass bed is one of the most memorable of the movie. Sorry if it offended some women, but there's a lot of truth to that scene, and humor. There's no indication it was done with in a mean spirit or cruelty, which is never appropriate in romance, in or out of marriage. Thankfully, the rest of the scene is all left to the imagination, unlike some of the gratuitous, garbage sex scenes in more recent movies, like Titanic and Cold Mountain. When I watched Rooster Cogburn, I wished John Wayne had tied the eternally chattering Katherine Hepburn to a brass bed, or at least gagged her! Nicholson did a fantastic job of selecting his cast. There are several actors who are still early in their careers, including John Belushi, Danny DeVito, Veronica Cartwright (not so early, given her experience as a child actress) and Ed Begley Jr. The weakness of Going South is that it did not given more of an opportunity for Belushi and DeVito to show their stuff, but this is easily said in hindsight. Lloyd's is the only other major comic role as Nicholson's nemesis. Some rare comedies work every time you see them, and some only work once. Going South is somewhere in between; it works if you watch it every few years, but it is best the first time. It works because of the comedic tension between the key characters, because it doesn't push the comedy too far, and because there is enough serious dramatic acting underlying the performances by Nicholson and Steenburgen. Another reason it works is that not everyone in the movie is a Lloyd or Belushi; there are some normal people, like the sheriff. When everyone in a comedy is a goofball, you've got a problem. I think you need some normal people as a reference point, even in screwball comedies.Going South might have been a little better had there been more amusing lines for some of the secondary characters like DeVito and Belushi. But it is a fun movie to watch, and you get the feeling that Nicholson, Steenburgen and cast had a lot of fun making it. You might want to watch some of the other movies Nicholson made in this 10 year period before seeing Going South to get a perspective on his early work. What you will see is a great actor who has demonstrated versatility throughout his career. Perhaps the one element these performances have in common is the ability of Nicholson to project intense personal energy through the character onto the screen. We see this certainly in later films, but there are few roles where Nicholson invests more energy into his character than in Going South.

rickmantler One can't help but notice how Nicholson eventually gave up on concealing his hilariously obvious coke nose (to the untrained ear it just sounds like "allergies"- this is the usual excuse given, of course....). Over the counter allergy medicine can help with allergy symptoms. Nothing helps cocaine-blasted sinuses. Not even Scorsese could direct while coked up. Nicholson's attempt is considerably more disastrous. Take a second look at the cast (see Belushi) and it isn't hard to deduce what happened to this movie.Note that it gets steadily worse as the film progresses.I wasn't expecting a "great" movie being that this was Nicholson's only directing effort. I was just curious. I didn't expect something this bad. Yikes.