The Shooter

I'm surprised about the many female voters who even give this film better marks. My thought about this film was that the target audience is adult and male. Whipped and tortured women, merciless revenge and a high body count are typical ingredients, introduced into film history by the spaghetti subgenre. The opening and the hand-smashing are DJANGO rip-offs. THE SHOOTER however lacks the style of e.g. DJANGO. Score, acting and cinematography are mediocre at best but if you look for the above mentioned ingredients you are in the right place here. And the actors don't have an Italian accent.

4 / 10.

Hell must be freezing over as Fred Olen Ray has made a good movie... In a career spanning 40 years and 167 movies, all of them bottom of the barell style bad. Movies so bad they make Uwe Boll's House of the Dead seem like Martin Scorsese made it in comparison.

The Shooter 1997 is the outlier to the 167. This was very good. A clear 6/10 movie but given the surprise of who made it. I gave it an 8.

Michael Dudikoff from American Ninja fame plays a lone gunslinger passing through town who hears a woman being assaulted on the outskirts and comes to her rescue, killing the five men attacking her in the process. It turns out one of the men he killed was the son of an infamous criminal, played by William Smith, who had been menacing and terrorising over the town. On hearing his son is dead he swears revenge on Dudikoff.

This film had a vibe similar to Clint Eastwoods High Plains Drifter, and I enjoyed every minute of it. It made me eager for more Michael Dudikoff westerns.

If Mr Olen Ray ever reads this review, please make some more Westerns as these seem to fit your style of direction.

Getting away from action movies for awhile, Michael Dudikoff does a western for a change, and the results are one of his best movies. This time around, he plays a mysterious drifter (what else?) who gets more than he bargained for when he comes to the rescue of a woman in the desert and returns her to town. County singer Randy Travis is good as one of the bad guys, and Valerie Wildman does a nice job as the girl. Veteran character actor William Smith is also (as always) a standout, with that gravely voice that just makes him perfect casting for the bad guy. Also nice is seeing Dudikoff play a vulnerable character, one who can't rely on fancy fighting skills to stay alive. One scene that helps to support the vulnerability of his character is when he's overcome by thugs and beaten to a bloody pulp and left for death. Afterwards, he must recover with the help of Wildman, and when he's well enough, he comes back gunning for revenge. Though it sometimes has the look of a film that was made by a bunch of friends wearing costumes gathered from some second-rate clothing stores, it works for what it is. Dudikoff isn't going to replace Clint Eastwood as the next western megastar, but he's good in the film and gets to show off a different side with his character. Worth a rental for those looking for a decent 90 minutes on a dull night.

Action, horror, sci-fi, exploitation director Fred Olen Ray shows he has some talent as a director. Character actor William Smith is one of the best tough/bad guys in the industry. He treats the viewer with the best acting performance of his career. As for Randy Travis he gives his best Lee Van Cleef impression. He's not bad in the film. Smith and Travis make the movie. As for the rest of the cast none of them really stand out. Ray did a great job directing this flick, Smith and Travis were good, I'd give this B western on a scale of one to ten(ten being the best) a seven.

Where do I start? The hero should have learned to ride a horse before filming a western. Red lipstick marks on a persons back really don't look like whip cuts. Hats of that period didn't have modern metal ventilation holes and the style of saddles used were not developed until the mid 1900s. After firing about eighteen rounds, our hero finally had to reload his six-shooter and there was zero "kick" when revolvers were fired. What bad guy takes the time to tie the picture perfect rope noose to hang the heroin? Who knew all the "whores" out west were so attractive? I could go on. All in all,a very amateurish production.