La venganza de Hawken

My review was written in February 1990 after watching the movie on Vidmark video cassette.

"Hawken's Breed" is an "Eastern"; a 19th-century tale of frontiersmen set in Tennessee. Minor pic played briefly last fall on its home turf in Nashville and currently is a home video title.

Peter Fonda is comfortably cast as a beaver trapper who falls in love with the beautiful Shawnee girl Serene Hedin. Unfortunately, she already "belongs" to mean trading post owner Jack Elam. A feud erupts when Hawken steals her away.

Atmospherically lensed story is slowly paced, and there is an unfinished quality about the film, which relies too heavily on voice-over to spin the yarn.

Bearded Fonda perfectly fits his role. Character actors Seamon Glass, Elam and Bill Thurman do a fine job building authenticity.

Hawken's Breed is much maligned. Those who say it is the worst film ever made clearly haven't seen many films.

This is an independent film made with a former major maverick film star (Peter Fonda), former major supporting player (Jack Elam), and former starlet (Sue Ann Langdon) supported by some solid character actors (Bill Thurman). I suspect all were working cheap or cheaper than they had in their prime.

And "cheap" is the operative word. Things are filmed on a small(er) budget. That does not diminish the film but you have to accept that what you are going to watch has that limitation. There are many films made on similar limitations that transcend them and outdo much bigger budget films but this isn't one of them. There is, however, enough here to keep one interested and enough to admire when it comes to film making on a shoe string.

At its heart this is a revenge themed frontier western. The story is simple and what is perhaps most obvious is the isolation of people in frontier times. A step the wrong way off a track or meeting up with strangers who are no good could end your life. The elements, the wild life, the Native Americans, other frontiersmen, all could leave you dead or dying in the middle of nowhere.

The director Charles Pierce (The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)) loved the frontier pre-wild west and post Civil war west and this film as well as Chasing the Wind (1998), The Winds of Autumn(1976), Winterhawk (1975), Sacred Ground (1983) and Grayeagle (1977) are all westerns that deal with individuals or couples against the elements or external forces, looking for a better life or seeking revenge against those who have taken that away from them. He has a rough consistency of themes, at least in his westerns.

Maybe because of budgetary constraints maybe because of temperament the action is short and sharp and a lot of scenes seem to be almost like "mood pieces". And, whether it is intentional or not, they work as a reminder that the old west wasn't all excitement and daring do.

On the negative there are some clumsy camera angles that don't show off the actors to their best, a couple of peripheral background actors that don't look authentic, and a out of place music score, which would have worked in an ironic comic 70s western but not here.

Also, through no fault of the filmmakers the video transfer is only average which is a pity as there are some great Tennessee landscapes The principal leads are all fine and Fonda's character especially fits in with his screen persona.

It may miss the mark but it is not the worst by a country mile.

6/10

It is a strange movie, but it is absolutely not "the worst movie ever" as some other reviews say.

Don't watch it as an action movie.

There is a lot of music.

There is action too, but that's not what is important in this movie.

It's a kind of ballad, a kind of contemplative movie.

A kind of illustrated tale, with images and music.

The soundtrack is quite nice (especially the instrumental song played through out the entire movie, I suppose it's banjo).

It's a kind of "red neck" western.

It's not perfect, it's a Z movie made with no money, and the DVD I found had sound problems, but I like this movie.

There is poetry in it.

A friend of mine once rented this, thinking since Peter Fonda starred in it, it couldn't be bad. WRONG! It's bad as anything can be. There is so much to laugh at and it's not the jokes. For instance, in one scene Hawken walks into the forest and when he comes out he is suddenly wearing a completely different outfit! Where was "the director's" brain when he shot that scene?!? Probably the same place Fonda's was when he agreed to do this flick. It's truly a shame one has to see such a fine actor go dumb in this poor excuse for a film.

Nobody's performance in this movie can be called acting. Jack Elam is brought in just to bring up the star count here, but all he does is looking startled in a very dark and awfully shot scene in some kind of bar. Not to mention the "Indians", the girl was so godawful I wanted to shoot her just to end her misery and mine as well. If I could give this a 0, I would. Shame that mark doesn't exist here. This truly reminds of a bad joke or an amateur footage made just for fun. This should serve as a proof of how bad B-movies can get.

Look no further, this is it, the worst movie ever made. There may be others that are tied, but there are none worse. There can't be.

I found this movie on a clearance-sale laserdisc for $3.25, and thought no movie with those actors could possibly not be worth that price. Turns out it's worth triple that - as the minimum they should have paid me to watch it.

I'm virtually certain that the girl in the picture on the cover of the package is not the girl in the movie, they substituted someone else, someone younger and cuter, to make it look more appealing. Whatever "plot" there was amounted to about three minutes of actual movie, the rest is filler. And I don't mean the kind of filler that you only realize is filler when it's over, or that is some kind of eye candy you don't mind having there, I mean filler that has you thinking about your shopping list. I think the "music" must have been made up by somebody with a friend who had a radio he listened to once. It's terrible.

If there were a shot of a nice mountain, a river valley, a forest, anything, there would be something positive about this movie. There isn't. Even with the speeder button on the remote, even at top laserdisc speed, you can't get it over with fast enough.

After years of thinking about commenting on movies, being tempted but not registering with IMDb, I finally cracked, because I had to do my part to push the user rating on this stinker down as far as possible.

The guidelines ask that you "focus on the content and context". I can't. There isn't enough content to focus on, and that's exactly my point. Sometimes bad is just bad, and this movie would have to be much better than it is to aspire to being only that.