Hawken's Breed

This movie is the reason I no longer rent titles that are unknown to me. This was so poorly done and acted that it appears that it was done in someone's back yard in one afternoon. Video tape jackets are like movie previews, they sure make the movie look good until you see it.

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.

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

If you want a complete waste of time, because pulling lint out of your belly button or cleaning the wax out of your ears or grouting your tile is your idea of a carnival thrill ride, then you'll not want to miss this one.

For one thing, forget the VHS cover. NO body in this movie looks that attractive (ie, the Indian girl). Someone else commented that whoever posed for the cover is not the same girl and I agree. The cover is THE most exciting thing about this movie.

To put this in perspective, I bought this VHS for 99 cents at K-Mart and three minutes, no, 40 seconds into the movie, I knew I had been ripped off.

I finished watching it because 1) I did pay 99 cents after all and, 2)there might possibly, conceivably been a hair of chance some scene in this turkey was worth more than a pinched loaf.

There wasn't.

Good grief, Fonda. I know you were hard up for roles when you did this, but this is beneath you.

Westerns were really out of fashion when director Charles B. Pierce made this one, so you have to admire him for putting so much effort into making it. Unfortunately, that's about the nicest thing I can say about "Hawken's Breed". The other user comments who wrote negative things about this movie were right about its bad quality. It's as slow as molasses, with most of what happens in the first half being completely unnecessary, except maybe to pad out the very thin story. The movie also shows some signs that it was a troubled production, with excessive use of narration used to try and explain things (and sometimes contradicting what we see and hear from the characters!) Even Guido and Maurizio De Angelis (what are they doing on an American film?) can't liven things up with their musical score, which is far from their best work. If there is anything else positive to say about the movie besides trying to resurrect a dead genre, it's that it provided work for Peter Fonda during a lean period for him.