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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STRAW DOGS – 1971 – HOME, SIEGE, HOME
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.