1967 film directed by Lamont Johnson
A Covenant with Death is a 1967 American legal drama film directed by Lamont Johnson (in his feature directorial debut), with a screenplay by Lawrence B. Marcus and Saul Levitt, based on the 1964 novel of the same name by Stephen Becker.[1][2] The film stars George Maharis, Laura Devon, Katy Jurado, and Earl Holliman.
Plot
Within a small Southwestern town on the Mexican border in 1923 America, a promiscuous, married woman is found dead in her bedroom. Her grieving, jealous and widely disliked husband Bryan Talbot is convicted of her murder and sentenced to hang on purely circumstantial evidence. The presiding Judge Hochstadter departs for a fishing trip, leaving it to the inexperienced, Mexican-American judge (and lothario) Ben Morealis Lewis to oversee the execution. Lewis has misgivings about mandatory sentencing and capital punishment in general as well as about Talbot's guilt.
In a stunning turn of events, Talbot unintentionally kills his executioner while trying to avoid being hanged for a murder he fiercely denies having committed. While awaiting the arrival of a replacement hangman, another man confesses to killing Talbot's Wife. Judge Lewis must negotiate various relationships (with his mother and two very different women for whom he harbors strong and conflicting feelings); provincial attitudes about love and marriage, sexuality, modernity, maturity, cultural integrity, group loyalty; and his faith in the triumph of justice.
Location
The film primarily was shot at Warner Brothers studios, with most outdoor scenes filmed on the company’s back lot.
