The 1967 Movie "In the Heat of the Night"

An illegal abortion is a key element in the 1967 movie In the Heat of the Night. A rich man is robbed -- but accidentally killed -- in order to obtain the money to pay for the abortion.

Stop reading this article now if you do not want to know the movie's ending.

The movie was released in 1967 and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Actor. The movie was nominated for two other Academy Awards, including Best Director. The movie won also the Golden Globe Award for Best Picture.

I watched the movie for yesterday. I had watched it and 1967 (I was about 15 years old), but did not remember the story.

Now in 2019, I do not consider the movie to be great. The movie has aged poorly. Now the movie is a period piece. It is too slow, and it caricatures racial relations. Also, I found the detective's solving of the homicide to be implausible. I do think that the cinematography and Sidney Potier's acting still are great.

======

Here in this article, however, I am addressing only the movie's treatment of the abortion issue in the mid-1960s. The movie is based on a novel that was published in 1965, and the story seems to take place at that time.

Although the rich man was killed because money was needed to pay for an illegal abortion, the morality of abortion is not an issue in the story. Illegal abortion is portrayed as common among low-class people, who had trouble keeping unwanted pregnancies secret and paying for illegal abortions.  The abortionists too are depicted as low-class people.

The movie's pregnant woman is a 16-year-old stupid slut. She gets pregnant from a short-order cook, who convinces her to blame her pregnancy on a low-ranking police officer. (I think that the officer had sex with her too, but that is not clear.) In the following scene, the young woman's older brother brings her to the police chief.

You can see in the above scene that the young woman is quite stupid. Earlier in the movie, the audience saw that she stands naked and drinks beer in her kitchen with the window shades open so that the police officer can watch her naked, drunk body from his police car. She is commonly known by many people in this small town in Mississippi to be a slut.

The stupid slut standing naked where
a police officer can watch her from outside

The short-order cook who got her pregnant is stupid too. In order to get the abortion money, he robbed the rich man and accidentally killed him. Then the cook implicated the low-ranking police officer in the crime. That police officer too is stupid. The cook and police officer appear in the following scene.

The police chief is not as stupid as the cook or as the low-ranking police officer, but the chief too is stupid. Basically, all the Caucasians in this small town in Mississippi are stupid -- in contrast to the brilliant Negro homicide detective from Philadelphia who has become involved in this situation and who heroically solves the crime.

(Sidney Poitier played the Negro detective superbly and deserved to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. That award was won instead by Rod Steiger, who played the Caucasian police chief. )

The Philadelphia detective learns that all the illegal abortions in this small town are done by a Negro woman who manages a shop. The detective figures -- in my opinion, his reasoning is implausible -- that the rich man was robbed to pay for an illegal abortion, so the detective goes to the shop to question the Negro woman.

While the detective is there, the pregnant slut and the short-order cook show up for the abortion, and so the detective concludes that the rich man was killed by the cook -- not by the low-ranking police officer.

=======

Of course, movie audiences in 1967 knew that not only low-class people were involved in illegal abortions. Middle-class and even upper-class people were involved sometimes too. In this particular movie, though, it's all low-class and sordid.

I don't think that the movie would cause anti-abortion citizens to change their opinions toward the legalization of abortion. Rather, the movie causes citizens to just shrug their shoulders in contempt toward the stupidity of all the residents -- especially the Caucasian residents -- of small towns in Mississippi and other Southern states.

In contrast to that stupid slut in In the Heat of the Night, the character Penny Johnson in Dirty Dancing is admirable and deserves sympathy and help.

Penny assuring Baby that she does not "sleep around"

=======

The following video summarizes the story well.

Below is the first part of a documentary about the making of the movie.

The documentary's second part is there.