The Shooting ou La Mort Tragique de Leland Drum

The Shooting is an indie western that reflects Americans' feelings of dread and uncertainty following the assasinations of JFK, Bobby, Malcolm, and Martin. Man overwhelmed by his environment. This West is a lonely,cruel world primarily populated by poor, uneducated men struggling to survive. The style is minimalist in that we are given information, through images and words, with great restraint and economy. An intense experience that calls for sustained attention. Comments below:"no idea what it's about", "dialogue incomprehensible",wish "storyline could be followed easily"-indicate some may benefit from a proper sinopsis, which I have not found. Others should view film before reading further. Willet returns to his camp and finds dimwit Coley quite agitated.Coley states that Willet's brother Coin and partner Leland arrived drunk from Winslow. Coin had run over a man and a child and needed to flee.Leland stays behind and gets shot by an unknown assailant. Willet and Coley are approached by a woman(we had seen her shoot her horse for no obvious reason) who offers $1000 to be escorted to Kingsley but refuses to reveal her name.They travel toward Crosstree where Leland learns Coin bought a horse 2 days ago. They proceed through the desert. The woman shoots at random, Willet believes she is sending signals to someone following. Gunslinger Billy emerges from hiding and joins them. His relation to the woman is unclear.They encounter day-old horse tracks as Billy and Coley threaten each other. The woman's horse pulls lame. Billy threatens to shoot Coley if he doesn't stay behind, demands Willet's gun and reveals he killed Leland. Willet:"I have my reason for staying.There ain't gonna be no killing". They encounter a bearded man with a broken leg and his horse.We see Coley following on foot. He takes the bearded man's horse. Billy spots Coley approaching and goes after him. Coley aims at Billy who shoots Coley in the face. Willet buries him. Woman to Willet:"I know that feeling.I've carried the burden of it longer than you". The elements continue to take its toll on people and animals.The woman rides while the men follow on foot.Willet charges at Billy, tosses his gun away,beats him and crushes his hand with a rock. Willet follows the woman, now on foot, into a canyon. She spots Coin, who looks identical to Coley, and shoots. Coin returns fire as Willet comes behind the woman. All three are hit.Billy wanders aimlessly waiting to die. The film leaves plenty of questions open to interpretation. Why wouldn't the woman attempt to kill Willet if Coin looks just like him? Did her son(and husband?) survive being run over? Why is Billy involved? An existentialist view of man and his predicament permeates this uncompromising western. 9/10

Monte Hellman has my vote for the most underrated and overlooked American director of all time. Like so many excellent film makers he got his first big break from legendary b-grade producer/director Roger Corman, and he co-directed (uncredited) Corman's 'The Terror' and edited his biker classic 'The Wild Angels'. Jack Nicholson starred in 'The Terror' and he an Hellman soon bonded together personally and professionally. Their greatest collaborations were the two 1960s westerns 'Ride In The Whirlwind' and 'The Shooting', filmed simultaneously, but released separately. Both are great movies but 'The Shooting' is the more interesting of the two, and along with Hellman's classic road movie 'Two-Lane Blacktop' his finest achievement. Both movies are close to being masterpieces, but rarely get mentioned except by other film makers, like Quentin Tarantino, who is a major fan, and enlisted Hellman's help in getting his debut 'Reservoir Dogs' to the big screen. 'The Shooting' is difficult viewing for most people. It requires you to pay close attention and fill in the blanks yourself. It isn't exactly a puzzle movie, but not everything is blatantly spelled out. The viewer has to work a little, but it's really worth it! The four main actors are all excellent. Not just Nicholson, and the legendary Warren Oates, but also Will Hutchins (of 50s TV western 'Sugarfoot'), and the beautiful Millie Perkins, who also appeared with Nicholson in 'Ride In The Whirlwind', though her role here is much more substantial and impressive. 'The Shooting' is one of the most original westerns I've ever seen, and easily one of the most underrated movies of the 1960s. I highly recommend it!

One of Hellman's 'existential' genre flicks from the 60s-70s cusp. Warren Oates and his skittish cohort Will Hutchins are hired by Millie Perkins (the star of "The Diary of Anne Frank") to help her navigate the desert to the next urban centre, or so she says. Soon she is joined by sharpshooter Jack Nicholson, who keeps the boys in line until the surprise ending. There are a lot of neat twists on western convention here - the woman is urbane and sickly, Hutchins is completely incompetent, and as they battle each other everyone is battling the desert as it grinds em down. Unfortunately, several rock solid performances are arrayed around the stilted and extremely irritating Perkins, who is so unappealing that you don't know what everybody sees in her. It's quite majestic for such a tiny-scaled movie, with some truly memorable images, but I also found it more portentous than the content justified, ultimately. The ending is pretty abrupt. Admittedly the sound on my VHS is atrocious which didn't help. Still pretty far out for a low budget western, and enough rewards to at least mitigate the drags.

"Did I tell you to do something?" - Billy "I don't give a curly-hair, yellow-bear, double dog damn if you did" - Coley

Four people ride across the desert tracking a killer but it is not clear who they really are and who it is they are looking for. In Monte Hellman's subversive western The Shooting, just released for the first time on DVD, Warren Oates is Willett Gashade, a bounty hunter turned mine owner who returns to find his brother Coin missing, his partner dead, and a fellow worker in a state of panic. When a strange woman shows up, the three set out on a journey with an unknown destination that leads to a final bizarre confrontation. The Shooting has more questions than you can find on the SAT and it is often a frustrating challenge to fit the pieces together. Hellman shot the film on a limited budget in eighteen days in the desert country near Kanab, Utah with B-movie producer Roger Corman and a young actor named Jack Nicholson.

It was released to television and did not play in the theater until years later after it developed a cult following in Europe. The quality of the transfer is impeccable but the dialogue borders on the incomprehensible. Slow-witted but good humored Coley (Will Hutchins) is fearful as he tells Gashade that he was asleep when he heard an argument between Willett's partner Leland Drum and Coin. He says that Colin fled, and Leland was shot dead by an unseen gunman and tells Gashade something about Coin having ridden down "a man and a little person, maybe a child," but Coley's not sure about that. Soon, a woman (Millie Perkins) who is not named arrives and offers to pay Gashade to guide her to Kingsley, a town that lies some hours away, beyond a dangerous desert. The woman is abrasive and complaining but Coley takes to her immediately while Willett is distanced and aloof.

Mystery piles upon mystery. When the riding party sets out, the woman asks to be led in the wrong direction without offering any explanation. The woman shoots her horse claiming it was lame but it turns out have no broken bones. When asked why she shot the horse, after a long period of silence, she can only muster a feeble smile. Along the way, Coley, Willett and the woman meet up with Billy Spears (Nicholson), a nattily dressed gunman with a sadistic smirk, and it becomes apparent that the purpose of the journey may be to track down the person or persons responsible for shooting Leland. Beyond that it is anyone's guess as to what the film means and an unforgettable climax does not clear up the confusion.

The director has said that The Shooting is a mirror of the Kennedy assassination where doubt remains about what actually happened on that day, but the connection is murky. Whatever its ultimate meaning, The Shooting is an involving ride full of twists and turns and Jack Nicholson's mighty performance as Billy is worth the price of admission. Actually the meaning may be revealed when Gashade says to Millie, "If I heard your name I wouldn't know it, would I?" She says, "No." Then he says, "then I don't see no point to it." She says, "there isn't any." Perhaps like life, The Shooting doesn't mean anything. It's just there to grab your attention.

This especial Western with allegoric qualities deals with a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins who wore a hairpiece) bent on vengeance , she forms a group (Will Hutchins and Warren Oates who in his biography he said that he had a crush on co-star Millie) to escort her across a warming desert . Later on , the posse is joined to a cocky gunfighter (Jack Nicholson) until a surprising finale.

Outlandish and difficult western is packed with thrills , exciting pursuits , noisy gun-play and strong performances . Written , produced (along with an uncredited Roger Corman) and starred by Jack Nicholson . Most budget was spent on the salaries for the horse wranglers , who along with the cast were the only union element in the picture . The slight budget was wasted on near constant rains ; in fact , very little was accomplished in the first two days of filming because of the severe flooding in the areas that were chosen as key locations . It is well set against the hot barren background and splendidly photographed landscapes by Gregory Sandor . Cinematographer Sandor shot the bulk of this film using natural light . Made back to back with ¨Ride the whirlwind¨ (where some cowboys are mistaken for members of a band) , both of them bear similar cast , cameraman , director and technicians.

This offbeat and strange motion picture filmed in 1965 was well directed by the maverick Monte Hellman , being firstly shown at the Montreal Film Festival in Canada . His movies are full of similarly independent-minded stars as Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates (his habitual actor) and result to be appreciated by the critics but virtually suffer lukewarm reception by the public . His firsts films were produced by Roger Corman , two horror quickies in low budget , titled ¨The beast from haunted cave (1959)¨ and ¨Back door to hell (64)¨ . After that , he directed two intelligent Western filmed concurrently in 1967 , and ¨Two-lane blacktop (71)¨, describing the underbelly of American life , furthermore ¨Cockfighter (74)¨, a not easily approachable film and sometimes nor even easy understandable . Later on , Hellman has not got his balance right , film-making flops as the Western ¨China 9, Liberty 37 (1979)¨, adventures ¨Iguana (88) and commercial terror as ¨Silent night, deadly night 3 (1989)¨. Nowadays, Hellman only makes failed B movies and television series .