The Hunting Party ** (1971, Oliver Reed, Candice Bergen, Gene Hackman) – Classic Movie Review 10,817

Director Don Medford’s nasty-toned, hard-to-like 1971 British Western The Hunting Party stars Gene Hackman as the rich and ruthless rancher Brandt Ruger, whose beautiful young wife Melissa (Candice Bergen) is kidnapped by the infamous outlaw Frank Calder (Oliver Reed) and his band of renegade rustlers and thieves. Calder just wants to be taught how to read a book and has mistaken her for a schoolteacher. But, when she decides to stay with them, her husband sets out to exact murderous revenge.

Brandt Ruger has left for a two-week hunting trip with some of his wealthy friends, travelling by luxurious private train and engaging in sadistic debauchery with women. Told his wife has been taken, Ruger arms his friends with high-powered rifles to begin a hunt for men instead of animals, taking their cue from The Most Dangerous Game.

The Hunting Party plays like a successor to the 1968 Shalako and a precursor of the 1973 The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing but with additional doses of gratuitous violence typical of the Sam Peckinpah post-The Wild Bunch era, but also there perhaps to disguise the weaknesses in the screenplay Gilbert Ralston. Most of the outstanding cast in this British production made in Spain is underused, particularly Bergen, and the story loses its direction half way through. But Hackman and Reed are as compelling as ever, there are strong action sequences and the film is briskly and professionally handled. There is a notable soundtrack composed by Riz Ortolani and it is well shot by Cecilio Paniagua.

Also in the cast are Simon Oakland as Matthew Gunn, Ronald Howard as Watt Nelson, G D Spradlin as Sam Bayard, Mitchell Ryan as Doc Harrison, L Q Jones as Hog Warren, William Watson as Jim Loring, Ralph Brown, Rayford Barnes as Crimp, Bernard Kay as Buford King, Richard Adams as Owney Clark, Dean Selmier as Collins, Sarah Atkinson as Redhead and Francesca Tu as Chinese girl.

UK censorship about cruelty to animals mean that the opening sequence, in which a cow’s throat is cut, is removed from UK prints. The British network version aired on BBC2 in 1999 had several further cuts.

It is shot in Spain at Almeria, Andalucia; Guadix, Granada; Estación de Huéneja-Dólar, Huéneja, Granada; Desierto de Tabernas, Almería, Andalucía; and in Moro Studios, Madrid, for the interior scenes.

It is made by Levy-Gardner-Laven and released by United Artists.

Hard-to-like it may be, but contemporary review comments like ‘Medford pushes it over into helpless banality’ seem unfairly hostile.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 10,817

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