Tagline: They got a murder on their hands… they don’t know what to do with it.
In the Heat of the Night movie storyline. An intense whodunit detective story thriller set in the little town of Sparta, Mississippi during a hot summer, with an innovative score by Quincy Jones and title song sung by Ray Charles. Norman Jewison masterfully directed this murder melodrama from a screenplay by Stirling Silliphant that was based on John Ball’s novel. The film’s posters proclaimed: “They got a murder on their hands. They don’t know what to do with it.”
The liberal-minded film, realistically-filmed by cinematographer Haskell Wexler (who had just filmed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966) and would later go on to Coming Home (1978)), was a milestone for the racially-divided mid-60s because it forced the odd-couple collaboration of a bigoted but shrewd, redneck Southern sheriff named Bill Gillespie (Steiger) and a lone, intelligently-clever black homicide expert from Philadelphia named Virgil Tibbs (Poitier).
The film, with a non-white actor in a lead acting role, was so controversial that it couldn’t be filmed in the Deep South, so the sets were recreated in various small towns in two states: Sparta, Freeburg, and Belleville, Illinois, and Dyersburg, Tennessee. Following the success of this film, Sidney Poitier reprised his Virgil Tibbs character in two other films: he investigated the murder of a prostitute in the sequel They Call Me Mister Tibbs! (1970), and battled against a drug smuggling ring in The Organization (1971).
In the Heat of the Night is a 1967 American mystery drama film directed by Norman Jewison. It is based on John Ball’s 1965 novel of the same name and tells the story of Virgil Tibbs, a black police detective from Philadelphia, who becomes involved in a murder investigation in a small town in Mississippi. It stars Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger, and was produced by Walter Mirisch. The screenplay was by Stirling Silliphant.
The film won five Academy Awards, including the 1967 awards for Best Picture and Rod Steiger for Best Actor. The film was followed by two sequels, They Call Me Mister Tibbs! in 1970, and The Organization in 1971. In 1988, it also became the basis of a television series adaptation of the same name.
Although the film was set in the fictional Mississippi town of Sparta (with supposedly no connection to the real Sparta, Mississippi), most of the movie was filmed in Sparta, Illinois, where many of the film’s landmarks can still be seen. The quote “They call me Mister Tibbs!” was listed as number 16 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Years…100 Movie Quotes, a list of top film quotes. In 2002, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
In the Heat of the Night (1967)
Directed by: Norman Jewison
Starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry Gates, James Patterson, William Schallert, Beah Richards, Peter Whitney, Larry D. Mann, Arthur Malet, Quentin Dean
Screenplay by: Stirling Silliphant
Production Design by:
Cinematography by: Haskell Wexler
Film Editing by: Hal Ashby
Costume Design by: Alan Levine
Set Decoration by: Robert Priestley
Art Direction by: Paul Groesse
Music by: Quincy Jones
Distributed by: United Artists
Release Date: August 2, 1967
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