Hannie Caulder (UK, 1972) 85 min color DIR: Burt Kennedy. SCR: Burt Kennedy, David Haft. PROD: Patrick Curtis. MUSIC: Ken Thorne. DOP: Edward Scaife. CAST: Raquel Welch, Robert Culp, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, Strother Martin, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Stephen Boyd, Aldo Sambrell. (Paramount Pictures)
A rare “feminist” western of the 1970s, as it features a gun-toting female protagonist in, of all people, Raquel Welch as the title character, who rides the vengeance trail after three varmints (Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, Jack Elam) murder her farmer husband, destroy their homestead, sexually assault her and leave her for dead. However, she meets callous gunfighter Thomas Luther Price (a barely recognizable Robert Culp) who grudgingly teaches her how to shoot so she can get revenge on this terrible trio. In this western, women are depicted as men’s property, instead of homesteaders or earth mothers (that is if we were to compare Hannie to Jill in Once Upon a Time in the West, or even Hildy in The Ballad of Cable Hogue). Indeed, strapping on a gun makes Hannie a human being in the eyes of others (or, the eyes of men). For instance, after she and Price travel down to the Gulf of Mexico coastline to meet a legendary gunsmith (Christopher Lee in a neat cameo role), she proves herself by helping to shoot it out against some invading bandidos. Only then does Culp see her as an equal. For that matter, what follows is the film’s sole notion of a romantic moment, as Hannie and Price are in silhouette, walking along the shoreline with the sun in the background. Although this is not technically a spaghetti western, Hannie Caulder however has that same rugged feel because it was shot in the same Spanish locales in which those films were produced, and that the three bad guys wear those long dusters right out of the classic opening of Once Upon a Time in the West (which, after all, featured Jack Elam). During this period, many American or British westerns were filmed in Spain to attain a rugged, decidedly “un-Hollywood studio” look. In the context of this film, the spaghetti-style locations, and bloody shootouts a la Sam Peckinpah, are more than just attempts to look trendy. The west is properly featured as some godforsaken place: no wonder men don’t expect Hannie Caulder to survive on her own.