Hannie Caulder (1972)

good back-story, and good acting

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Despite this spaghetti western have american leading actors,it was an english good production.apart Christopher Lee totally miscasting,all others actors had a fantastic acting,probable the Robert Culp's finest hour,the power trio of badmen Jack Elam, Strother Martin and Borgnine are the three Stooges of west,the most dirty and stinky gang of all time,the gorgeous Welch was in fullness of your career and was hot than never,completely naked covered with a little red poncho showing just a little enough to us....a different kind and the first female leading role since Johnny Guitar!!!Resume:First watch: 1998 / How many: 2 / Source: Cable TV-DVD / Rating: 7.25

A spaghetti western that is definitely outside the box. Sorry I keep using that expression. Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) survives a brutal rape by three brothers who take lowlife scoundrels to a new level After her husband is murdered and she is raped, she goes after them and knows little about gun fighting until she meets a bounty hunter played by Robert Culp who shows her the ropes. An aside issue is the the three lowlife brothers are well played by Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin who do a good job of channeling The Three Stooges and steal every scene they are in. I remember the critics hated it but what do they know since they usually have their mind made up before watching movies like this. It is too bad that Messrs. Borgnine, Elam, and Martin did not try to do a couple of comedy westerns without being low life scumbags because as these characters they were funny and had great chemistry.

After she is raped and her husband murdered, a woman (Raquel Welch) hires a bounty hunter to instruct her in the use of a gun so she can get her revenge on the three outlaws (Ernest Borgnine and two guys) responsible.Quentin Tarantino said the film was one of his inspirations for Kill Bill. "Why I love Hannie Caulder so much is Robert Culp. He is so magnificent in that movie. I actually think there's a bit of similarity between Sonny Chiba and Uma (in Kill Bill) and Raquel Welch and Robert Culp in Hannie Caulder." You can totally see it during the training montage, which smacks of kung fu movies more than westerns.And Christopher Lee is in this? How many westerns has he done? None other that I can think of. But what do I know? It is still great seeing him here.

For a long time in mainstream movies the only way a female protagonist could take justice into her own hands was if she was raped. Why this trope exists as much as it does I don't know; however, because time after time in these sorts of films it was the key to justify female vigilantism, the act devolved, from something to be taken seriously, to merely as a plot-point, violence for the heroine to face, get over, and more often than not, never talk about again in the context of the story. Hannie Caulder is no exception and for a comedy-western it's a horrible direction to go in. Indeed, director Burt Kennedy, famous for Support your Local Sheriff, seems like he just can't help himself. If this is suppose to be a gritty tale of female redemption why in the world are the Three Stooges in it? Unwashed, raping, murdering Stooges, but comedians nonetheless. Every time Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin and Jack Elam appear, even in an opening bank- robbery gone bad that comes off more like a Sam Peckinpah parody, their squabbling feels as if the only thing missing is a "nyuk nyuk nyuk."Also, while I understand Raquel Welch is an incredibly beautiful woman, willing to wear next to nothing for a good third of the movie -- but that poncho that she has on in all the publicity shots? It's the same blanket that she was raped in; the only thing she was able to salvage from her burning house. I can understand in context of the story having her wear it for a while, but then Kennedy turns around and decides to feature it on the cover is a little bit jaw- dropping. But I suppose that was just the zeitgeist of the late 1960s and early 70s, a time when "Sexy Rape Victim" wasn't a contradiction in words to the men making movies.