goods116 *** SPOILERS *** I liked the first half of this movie, bolstered by an excellent cast of Hackman, Reed and Bergen. The initial set up is a good one: Hackman chasing down Reed and his kidnapped wife by using his long range sniper rifle to gun down Reed and his crew. The first couple of encounters are strong. Of course Bergan falls for Reed. But then that's it. That's pretty much the whole plot. Hackman guns down everyone. No showdown, no interesting shootouts, no twists, no surprise ending, nothing. For Hackman, 70s/genre fans only.

zardoz-13 Violence escalated in Hollywood movies by the late 1960s with the shoot-out in "Bonnie & Clyde" and later the bloodbath that celebrated masculinity gone berserk in Sam Peckinpah's seminal masterpiece "The Wild Bunch." Presumably, this must have inspired Jules Levy and Arthur Gardner, well known for their family oriented television series "The Rifleman," to produce this riveting western shoot'em. When you consider the wealth of talent that went into this western lensed mainly on the plains of Spain, you have to wonder how such a project could have suffered so badly with critics and audiences alike. Scenarists William Norton of "Brannigan," Gilbert Ralston of "Willard," and Lou Morheim of "The Last Blitzkrieg" definitely put their best pens forward. No sooner has illiterate outlaw Frank Calder (Oliver Reed of "The Three Musketeers") kidnapped a gorgeous woman, Melissa Ruger (Candice Bergen of "Soldier Blue"), so she can teach him how to read than the woman's hypocritical husband (Gene Hackman) pursues them with a vengeance. The husband is no ordinary individual. He is cattle baron Brandt Ruger, and he has just bought some Sharps rifles that can blast a man from twice the distance of a Winchester repeating rifle. Brandt is basically a sadist with a trophy wife and possessive streak a mile wide. Once he learns that his wife has been abducted, Brandt fears the worst. He hates the idea that Melissa will be raped and impregnated with an illegitimate child. The suggestion that Brandt might be impotent aroused my suspicions. He doesn't want to get stuck with raising a bastard. All of this occurs after Ruger has launched a hunting party with several prominent friends and a train-load of prostitutes. He decides to chase Calder and company, but he isn't so much concerned with rescuing Melissa as he is with blasting all to kingdom come. That Brandt is a sadist is clear from the outset. Director Don Medford establishes this characteristic brilliantly in the first few minutes when he cross-cuts shots of Calder and his gang carving up one of Brandt's steers with Brandt reaming Melissa out in their bedroom. Ironically, Melissa finds more compassion in the veteran outlaw.Ingeniously, "The Hunting Party" scrutinizes masculinity under-fire in what initially struck me as a mindless massacre but is far more substantial than I imagined. Ruger relishes the chance to kill Calder and his cutthroats with extreme prejudice. Calder and his men are taken aback to begin with because they cannot see their adversaries sniping away at them. Not long afterward, the gang turns on each other. By this time, in a riff on The Stockholm Syndrone, Melissa and Calder develop a mutually supportive relationship, and Brandt is predictably infuriated when his worst fears are confirmed by dying outlaw Hog Warren (L.Q. Jones of "The Wild Bunch")who Brandt stabs to death in the throat. Medford doesn't rely on exploding blood squibs. They smear blood all over their victims. By the time that Ruger and his companions have begun to whittle down the outlaws, "The Hunting Party" generates far more depth than its deceptively gratuitous violence suggests. The ending is particularly audacious. Ruger is so consumed with hate that he consigns himself to death by traipsing into the desert to kill both Calder and Melissa. The performances are exception and the line-up of western character actors who play Calder's gang is second to none. Oliver Reed delivers another stunning performance; Reed was incapable of giving a bad performance. Sadly, this rugged British actor never received the recognition that his distinguished colleagues got in the form of knight-ships! Hackman rivaled him. After the first hour, you'll wonder why the outlaws neglect to lure the hunters into an ambush and kill them. Particularly incredible is the hero who disarms himself because he had to put his best friend out of his misery after having been shot by Ruger's men. When I first saw it I loved the violence, then I turned against it later because I treated it like a derivative western with little to set it apart from other gory oaters. Now, I consider it a maligned, misunderstood horse opera that defied narrative and genre expectations. Challenging and interesting, "The Hunting Party" had more on its plate than even Peckinpah's masterpiece.

virek213 When you go hunting with Brandt Ruger, you go first-class all the way. But when you steal his "property", you sign your own death warrant.That is something that a notorious outlaw (Oliver Reed) and his gang have to learn in the worst way possible in THE HUNTING PARTY, a 1971 British/American western that, even by 21st century standards, is still incredibly violent. Reed kidnaps a local schoolteacher (Candice Bergen) in the (now faint) hope that he'll be taught how to read. When Bergen warns him about her husband, he tells her "It don't matter whose wife you are." A fatal misjudgment on his part, for her husband Brandt Ruger (Gene Hackman) is not one to fool around with. While out on a hunting party with a few of his friends, the dictatorial and very abusive land baron learns of Bergen's kidnapping, and thus gets blood in his eyes. And rather than going after game, he and his boys instead go after Reed and his gang, picking them off one at a time with high-power rifles that can hit from a distance of 800 yards. The result is a sagebrush variation of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, done with some of the most brutally violent shootouts this side of THE WILD BUNCH and SOLDIER BLUE. And as he is a man driven by extreme jealousy (Bergen is his personal "property", whom he physically abuses on more than one occasion), the fact that Bergen is beginning to develop a rapport with Reed now gives him whatever license he feels he needs to kill her as well, though he drags it out for the sheer sadistic fun of it to a very cynical and blood-splattered conclusion.There isn't too much doubt that THE HUNTING PARTY was made to take advantage of the "market" opened up by THE WILD BUNCH and its director Sam Peckinpah's choreography of violent action, as well the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. The shootouts are extremely bloody, and they clearly mirror those of THE WILD BUNCH in the use of slow motion and quick cutting. Where THE HUNTING PARTY falls short, however, is in a crucial area that Peckinpah knew was vital to his film being successful: the action and plot must be character-driven and made to feel real to an audience. Veteran TV director Don Medford (who, among other things, directed the classic 1961 Twilight Zone episode "Death's Head Revisited) and screenwriters Gilbert Ralston, William Norton, and Lou Morheim know how to do the Peckinpah-inspired gunfights, but they don't seem to have taken too much time to really delineate any complexities in the three main characters. Bergen is merely a damsel in distress, caught between two men who are basically bastards, one merely semi-controlling (Reed), the other a sadistic control freak of the highest order (Hackman). Absent the complex psychological and character-driven narrative that propelled THE WILD BUNCH to a controversial but well-deserved glory, THE HUNTING PARTY can so easily be tagged, as more than a few critics have done (albeit perhaps too zealously), as an extremely bloody sagebrush shooting gallery in which violence is staged for the sake of violence.The film does succeed in giving us good performances from the three leads (notably Hackman, whose role is credibly sadistic to the highest degree); good cinematography done on location in Spain (as a stand-in for Texas); and supporting roles for L.Q. Jones (a member of Peckinpah's stock company); Simon Oakland; Mitchell Ryan; and William C. Watson. And one can't fault the long-distance shooting that occurs, or the way it so ingeniously borrows a great old-world story (THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME) and puts it into a WILD BUNCH-type western format. Had the filmmakers only paid a bit more attention to complex characters and motives here as Peckinpah had in his epic film, however, THE HUNTING PARTY might have been a bit more than a good, if incredibly and graphically violent, post-Peckinpah/Leone addition to a Western genre that was rapidly changing during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

sol1218 **SPOILERS** Coming across like a combination between "The Searchers" and "Wild Bunch" the western revenge movie "The Hunting Party" never quite matches, in blood gore and bullet ridden body's and body parts, either one of those movies. Not that it lacks the vital ingredients of both but because it's so ridiculous that you have a hard time believing it.Riding through the town of Ruger outlaw Frank Calder, Oliver Reed, and his gang of desperado's kidnap Mellissa Ruger, Candice Bergen, for the sole purpose, in mistaking her for an elementary school teacher, of teaching Frank to read! It seems that Frank wants to read about his exploits in the newspapers besides looking at the pictures and comic-strips in them. As this is happening Mellissa's old man that the town of Ruger is named after Brandt Ruger, Gene Hackman, is out on a train trip with his millionaire friends to gun down wild game with this new high powered, that can hit its targets at 800 yards, and telescopic rifle that he gave his friends for a present for going on the trip with him. Getting the shocking news that his old lady, Mellissa, had been kidnapped Brandt shoots right back to Ruger, with his not too willing friends, to track and gun down Mellissa's kidnappers as well as save her from a fate worse then death; Being gang raped by Frank and his motley crew.Gunning down, at long range, most of Frank's men Brandt is shocked to later find out-from one of them- that his pretty and abused, mostly by him, wife has fallen in love with that dirty foul mouth and illiterate slob Frank Calder! By then most of Brandt's men, who are still left alive, decide to call it quits knowing that saving Mellissa is no longer worth their effort. Since she's been stricken not only by Frank's both charm and rugged good looks, not to mention his wild animal-like body odor, but the Stockholm Syndrome, a kidnap victim falling in love with his or her kidnapper, as well. Only Brandt's good friend, the only friend he now has left in the world, Matthw Gunn, Simon Okland, decides to go along with him on his mission to rescue his wife who in fact doesn't want to be rescued by him.The film ends with a one on one confrontation between Frank and Brandt in the Mojave Desert with Matthew Gunn having by then come to his senses and checked out of the movie. With the big winning prize, since by then a couple dozen persons had been killed over her, being non other then Brandt's kidnapped wife and Frank's lover the beautiful and now suffering from a serious case of sun stroke Mellissa Ruger!Not that bad of of film if you don't take it at all seriously and just watch it for laughs which I think that "The Hunting Party" was really intended for. The most moving and at the same time tragic scene in the movie had nothing to do with it's female star-whom everyone was killing themselves over-Candice Bergen but one of Frank's gang members Doc Harrison, Mitch Ryan.***SPOILER ALERT***Badly wounded and dying Doc begged his good friend Frank to put him out of his misery which he didn't have the heart to do. Finally not being able to take it, Doc's groans of agony, anymore Frank did what he had to do but with both deep regret and apprehension. The way Frank did it would literally blow you, like it did Doc, completely away!