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Bookmark this pageIn the Heat of the Night (1967)
Director: Norman Jewison
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Jewison's multi-Oscared murder melodrama of racial tension - set in a small Mississippi cotton town where Steiger's bigoted sheriff finds himself forced into collaboration with Poitier's arrogant black homicide expert from Philadelphia - oozes sufficient Southern sweat and features enough admirably crumpled character faces to make up for its over-strident liberal rhetoric. It certainly ranks as superior in every respect to the two Virgil Tibbs vehicles (They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! and The Organisation) with which Poitier subsequently exploited his homicide cop role. Stirling Silliphant's adaptation of the John Ball novel was still deemed controversial enough, in 1967, to require the recreation of a Mississippi small town in the less sensitive environs of Illinois.Author: PT
Cast & crew
Director: Norman Jewison
Producer: Walter Mirisch
Cast: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Quentin Dean, James Patterson, Lee Grant, Scott Wilson, Matt Clark full cast
Genre(s): Thrillers
Duration: 109 mins
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