The Hunting Party (1971 film)
The Hunting Party is a 1971 American-British western film, directed by Don Medford for Levy-Gardner-Laven and starring: Oliver Reed, Gene Hackman, Candice Bergen, Simon Oakland and Ronald Howard.Relations are strained between sexually sadistic cattle baron Brandt Ruger and his wife, Melissa when he leaves for a two-week hunting trip with some of his wealthy friends."), but by the self-conscious echoes of the final sequence, The Hunting Party has pretensions to the stark realism and raw passions of Stroheim's Greed.What finally emerges is indicated all too clearly by the first two shots in the film: a knife ripping open the belly of an up-ended steer, and Ruger's hands scrabbling frenetically at his wife's naked body.Everything that follows is equally crude and synthetic, with Oliver Reed, brooding away as the noble savage, invited to outdo even the worst excesses of the Brazilian cinema as he sobs wildly after being forced to shoot his best friend or takes an unconscionable time over lying down for good in his death scene (still wearing, one notes, a Persil-white shirt).When all the histrionics are said and done, with Candice Bergen suffering mightily and Gene Hackman permanently sneering, all one is left with is a handful of striking Spanish locations and a teasing mystery as to how the outraged husband manages to recognise his wife's abductor, whom he has never seen, through a telescope at a range of some eight hundred yards."[6] Leonard Maltin gave it his lowest rating, writing: "Fine cast is wasted in repellently violent western that adds nothing new".