Les charognards

Advertisements for "The Hunting Party" misleadingly portrayed the scenario as a western riff on the old "Most Dangerous Game" ploy: man hunting man for sport. Instead, this William Norton-Gilbert Alexander-Lou Morheim script is an old-fashioned revenge tale studded with new-fangled blood and sex. Gene Hackman plays land baron Brandt Ruger, an amoral sadist living in the rural town that bears his surname, who leads a somewhat-leery pack of well-wrought gentleman friends on a hunt to kill the gunslingers responsible for kidnapping his wife (he also appears to want his wife killed as well, since she's obviously been raped and now may be carrying a bastard child!). Taking his cue from Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch", director Don Medford takes great delight in blasting his supporting cast away to Kingdom Come in a hail of gunfire, blood-packs spurting in slow motion. Medford hasn't much originality (or versatility), and several of his scenes are downright sloppy. However, Ruger's unmitigated relish for treating humans as cattle allows Hackman to revel in some mangy, dastardly deeds--he's a marvelous villain. As the head of the kidnappers, Oliver Reed disguises his British accent fairly well and is surprisingly tender with captive Candice Bergen (as sort of a Sweet Hostage). Opening scene juxtaposing the knifing of a cow with Hackman forcing himself on his wife in the bedroom is heavy-handed at best, distasteful at worst. But the picture improves from there and gives us a brutal, fairly realistic look at the lawless West. Very good performances from all three stars, excellent work as well from Mitchell Ryan as Reed's faithful friend Doc. **1/2 from ****

Gene Hackman and Oliver Reed face off in this hard-hitting Western from Don Medford (!). Unfortunately, the film seems to be trying to out-Peckinpah Peckinpah without fully knowing why he does what he does. What we're left with is a superficial exercise in nihilism but who doesn't love that? Lots of good action scenes, some nice acting and a meanstreak separate this one from the pack. Well worth searching out despite its flaws.

Others see this film as bland or metaphorical. I saw it after considerable reading about the West as it truly was, not as a Zane Grey work of fiction or morality play. What I saw in this film was a fictional story powerfully based on accurate historical fact. Many of those facts are not pleasant or moral and violence is as much a part of this Western movie as it is of most others. What is unique here is the accurate inclusion of the actual methods and attitudes surrounding that violence. The Lone Ranger it is not. Neither is it metaphorical. My interest in, and modest knowledge of, the methods and technology of that time led me to be strongly involved when watching this movie. Some of the scenes brought out a strong feeling of dread: dreamlike realism. In that way, it is, in my mind, one of the most honest Westerns of all time.

A group of hired gunmen travelling north to participate in a range war (presumambly someplace like Kansas or Wyoming, as the story by all accounts seem to take place in the early 1880's) kidnap a hapless woman from a small town while her husband, a mean, sadistic sonofabitch cattle baron, is engaged in a hunting trip with his upper class buddies. Few people in any kind of audience, then or now, would have trouble spelling out this kind of plot in advance, how the woman will fall in love with her kidnapper while the husband realizes she's lost to him forever, but, seeing how this is a 44. Magnum, the most powerful handg- hey, waitaminute. Seeing how this is the pessimistic and violent movie world of the early 70's we're talking about, if it's going to be predictable, you can at least be sure it's going to be bloody and grim and nihilistic in the process.

You know it's a grim movie you're going to see when it opens with a shot of Gene Hackman roughing up his wife a little in that particularly mean-spirited way that made him such an endearing villain in the early 70's (and which he reprised for Clint Eastwood's UNFORGIVEN winning his second Oscar) intercut with shots of a cow being slaughtered. At least director Don Medford is upfront about it. The movie remains pretty unflinching in the portrayal of violence. Almost every actor is propped with blood squibs at some point in the film while others not lucky to be shot out of horses in slow motion get knives in their necks and buckshot in their faces. The Hunting Party is dinstictly a product of its time, a loyal retracing of the steps back to THE WILD BUNCH instead of taking the genre to new areas, belonging to that particularly bloody and violent American western niche that followed in the wake of Peckinpah's film (along with others like Chato's Land, The Revengers, The Deadly Trackers etc). Subverting and taking off the rose-tinted glasses the far west mythos was seen with by people like John Wayne, who cared so much about perceived values and ideals he had to make RIO BRAVO in response to Gary Cooper throwing down his star in HIGH NOON, taking a closer, more realistic look, if not at authentic period detail, then at least at how people were shot and killed.

All blood and clamor aside however, The Hunting Party is just not a very good movie. Medford's average-to-poor direction and the fact it's 20 minutes too long make sure it won't be seeing top lists anytime soon. And then there's the script. That Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman) curiously refrains from shooting Frank Calder, the man who kidnapped his wife and whom he specifically set out to kill, when he gets plenty of chances to do so, seems to occur for no other reason than to stretch a final showdown that could have taken place in the first half hour into almost two hours. The acting is in turns okay and wooden, generally of the 'good enough' or 'will have to do' variety. Oddly enough for a cast featuring a man who would go on to win the Oscar that same year for THE FRENCH CONNECTION and kickstart a brilliant career, the best thing about The Hunting Party is a man who made a career out playing Athos in The Three Musketeers. Oliver Reed looks just right for the part, in a role that would be played probably by Richard Boone 20 years earlier and Javier Bardem twenty years later. When he tries to emote and just do anything that doesn't involve looking mean and badass, he faulters, but he looks mean and badass for all but maybe 2 minutes in the film.

One of those "lost" films that only shows up on cable once in a while, THE HUNTING PARTY is a blood soaked western that is an obvious response to Sam Peckinpah's THE WILD BUNCH. Made in 1971 by Don Medford and starring a young Candice Bergen, a vicious Gene Hackman, and Oliver Reed with an American accent. This is certainly one of the most violent westerns ever made with slo-mo gunshot wounds and more agony and gore than most horror films. Nihilistic and extreme without hope or redemption. The soundtrack is excellent as well as the photography and editing. The Hunting Party will hopefully be rediscovered on home video soon, or else make sure you catch it on FLIX this month!