Tag Archives: sam peckinpah

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Robert Duvall, 95.

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Very fine actor Robert Duvall has passed. I greatly appreciated his work in the first two Godfather movies. Duvall had many other memorable roles. Check out “Network” (1976) and “Lawman” ( 1971), for instance. But there were many other interesting roles.

The early George Lucas dystopian science fiction film “THX 1138” (1971) featured Duvall as a drug-controlled inhabitant of an ordered, sterile future world. Duvall rebels against the strict environment and escapes to an outside world that is not harshly monitored and climate controlled and where all needs are provided. Is he equipped to survive in “The Wild”?

“The Killer Elite” (1975) finds Duvall as the scheming Hansen, a covert agent operating for the CIA who double crosses his partner James Caan in this engaging Sam Peckinpah directed Action/Martial Arts picture.

Rober Duvall contributed his considerable acting talent to quite a few moving pictures throughout his life and will be missed.

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“The Hunting Party” (1971) – Love Beyond Bounds

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This is a very watchable Western that exhibits a high level of grotesque violence. I attribute the violence to the fact that this movie follows on the heels of “The Wild Bunch” which was a Western and which saw director Sam Peckinpah push the boundaries of on-screen gun play and graphically portrayed violence. “The Hunting Party” follows in the mold and shows a lot of bullet holes being made in some of the characters and there is generally sadistic bent to the character portrayed by Gene Hackman. Hackman is a cattle baron who treats his young wife like so much property. Oh, yes. And Hackman does not treat women well, in general, in this movie. Oliver Reed plays an outlaw who just wants to learn how to read. He mistakes Hackman’s wife, Candice Bergen, as being a schoolteacher who can assist him in his time of need. Bergen resists the kidnapping, at first, but grows fond of Reed and eventually sides with him as Hackman wages a bloody quest to recover his wife and put the outlaws to shame who abducted her. Therein, the violence ensues.

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David Warner, R.I.P.

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This very recognizable and enjoyable actor died in 2022. I have been very negligent in posting about some of the entertainers I have admired who passed away during the run of this blog (not just this year). I need to make amends in my own mind and list those who have passed that I have very badly neglected.

David Warner appeared in a number of memorable roles over the years. I was fond of his performance as the mentally challenged instigator of the societal clash in Peckinpah’s “Straw Dogs”. He played the inquisitive photographer who stumbles on the supernatural forces at work on Gregory Peck’s family in “The Omen”. Warner played Jack The Ripper in the time travel adventure “Time After Time”. And he can be found in some of the theatrical and television series productions of the Star Trek franchise. Wow.

Cool career. Definitely an actor with a particular style. Equally at home playing good or evil characters.

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“More Dead Than Alive” (1969) – Worthy Thoughtful Western

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I started watching this western and began thinking that it was playing out as another dated take on The Old West that we have seen in countless TV shows and repetitive movies. There was a soundtrack featuring a harmonica, a jailbreak out of a Federal prison, gunplay galore and even some Gatling Gun action. It struck me as being old fashioned in an age where the Western had been electrified and shaken up by a work like Peckinpah’s “The Wild Bunch”. How could filmmakers fall back on all the old, reliable cliches of The Western genre and expect the audience to even care?

As it turns out, “Alive” and “Bunch” were released in the same year. I don’t know which, in essence, was seen first by the public but “More Dead Than Alive” impressed me as its story unfolded. Clint Walker plays a recently released convict known as Killer Kane who has spent 18 years in prison. As he sheds his shackles, he is left with an even more daunting sentence: What can a man convicted of multiple murders and who has only known life as an outlaw get by in this new world? What job will he be able to find, how will he live, how is it possible to shed the image the public has of him as being a person who has snuffed out others’ lives?

It proves to be a very hard ride for Walker who can’t keep even the most menial of jobs for long and is shunned by society in general as being a dangerous man.

Vincent Price has a nice appearance as a travelling sideshow operator who gladly invites Killer Kane to be his featured performer in Price’s Shooting exhibition. Even in this element of handling guns, Walker is met with strong opposition by the child like psychotic teenager Price was previously using as his featured shooting star.

Another similarity to “Bunch” is the observance of newly emerging technology such as a phone and bicycles. The times have certainly changed since Kane went to jail and the remaining movie chronicles his struggles to survive in his new environment and live down his bad name.

Definitely worth a viewing!

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STRAW DOGS – 1971 – HOME, SIEGE, HOME

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Legendary boundary pushing movie.  What did it bend out of shape?  This movie is bursting with plenty of acts of extreme cinematic violence and nastiness.  Back in the early 1970’s, this Sam Peckinpah directed movie made censors’ heads swim.

Dustin Hoffman portrays a brainiac who marries a local British girl and elects to live with her in the English countryside to quietly do his work and make her happy.  The old house they live in requires a bit of upkeep so the couple decide to employ some local handymen to fix the place up.   Seems that Hoffman’s wife, Susan George, was  once involved with one of the “workers” and their continued flirtation leads to some very high levels of friction developing.  To say the least.

Hoffman, the cerebral, retiring American outsider is contrasted with the crude, “earthy” thugs who take his money, do almost no work repairing his house, and mock and humiliate him in front of his wife who, increasingly, comes to resent her husband for not standing up to these bullies.

The boiling point is reached when Hoffman takes in another outsider after he is accused of murdering one of the locals’ kids.  A liquor fueled gang gathers to take back, by force if need be (or not needed), the mentally defective man who they think killed the girl in town.  The siege at the timid Hoffman’s farm begins.  But Hoffman has a change of attitude after being forced into such a combustible situation.  He will fight back.

Beautiful country scenery is on ample display here and Peckinpah’s stylized ballet of cinematic violence plays out in a more logical fashion then in later films such as “The Killer Elite”.

Any way you look at it, you will feel drained by movie’s end.