In the Heat of the Night - 1967

In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed   Mounted





In the Heat of the Night, 1967 Giclee Print
12 in. x 9 in.

Buy at AllPosters.com
Framed   Mounted


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).