Sex-shooter, Or: A rambling discussion of unseen films

I’ve known for some time that my knowledge of western films, as a genre, is woefully lacking. In response to Shandon’s film noir program (which commenced last night in fine form with The Petrified Forest), I decided to schedule a set of oaters, for my own education as much as anything else. As I was finalizing the seven titles that would make up this series, Shandon shared a sensational one-sheet for a lurid little “western” feature entitled The Female Bunch.

Intrigued, I watched the film’s trailer, which was so entertaining – “Independent women. Turning women’s lib into a menacing reality!” – that I couldn’t imagine the full-length feature possibly living up to it. Moreover, I had limited my western program to seven slots, and while I was open to pulpy fare well outside the sanctioned western canon, The Female Bunch didn’t quite fit the bill. It is clearly not a western but rather desert-set sexploitation and is, in all likelihood, quite tedious after a few minutes. My “discovery” of this film, however, did dovetail with my dawning interest in another title, Hannie Caulder, a rape-and-revenge* western starring Raquel Welch and featuring a gang of tormentors played by an almost unbelievable troika: Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin and Jack Elam. This film, notwithstanding its higher production values, seems to appeal to some of the same prurient interests as The Female Bunch. If its promotional materials are any indication, Hannie Caulder traffics in its star’s sex appeal without addressing the true horror of sexual assault or any moral quandaries presented by the pursuit of vengeance. Not that, from a filmgoing perspective, there’s anything wrong with that, I do hope it goes without saying.

Hannie Caulder also didn't make the program even though it happens to feature Christopher Lee(!) in his only western. According to his autobiography, he wishes he had appeared in more of them. Lee further relates that throughout his career he “[p]ranc[ed] from genre to genre, like the devil on stepping stones.” His experience with “erotica,” for instance, reveals the horror icon’s overriding gentility and perhaps hyper-sensitivity:

Erotica was a genre I did not fancy. It was true that as Dr. Sadismus in The Torture Chamber of Dr. S [Netflix it! – ed.] I was surrounded by a sea of nude women, and the effluvium that rose from their bodies as the lights grew hotter was like marsh gas, but I could not believe the picture incited to erotic indulgence.

Mr. Lee goes on to address his varying levels of involvement in soft-core projects such as Stud, The Story of O, Philosophy of the Boudoir and Eugenie’s Journey into Perversion.

In retrospect, maybe it’s too bad that, in the case of The Female Bunch, Christopher Lee, unlike Russ Tamblyn and Lon Chaney, Jr., was not available, affordable or even considered. And speaking of due consideration, I have perhaps, in light of this discussion’s clear (and inevitable?) drift away from westerns back into my exploitation comfort zone, unfairly given this movie short shrift. On the off chance I seek to rectify my summary dismissal of this Bunch, all apologies to Sam Peckinpah in advance.


* Amazon.com reports that certain customers who purchased Hannie Caulder (VHS, the only format in which it’s readily available in the U.S.) also bought, among other items, the Millennium Edition DVD of another film involving the rape of its protagonist and her quest for violent revenge, the non-western I Spit on Your Grave (aka Day of the Woman), which was the subject of some controversy upon its release. I don’t find this overlap inherently problematic, just curious. Is “rape and revenge” its own subgenre? Were a set of grad or seminar students recently assigned these materials so that they may study such depictions?


Next time: More on cinematic rape and revenge (a little "r & r") and vigilante justice more generally.