Hannie Caulder is a 1971 British Western film. The film was directed by Burt Kennedy and starred Raquel Welch, Robert Culp and Ernest Borgnine. The screenplay was rewritten by Kennedy, who was not credited.
Plot
Hannie Caulder is a frontier wife, living with her husband at a horse station between towns in the American West. After a disastrous bank raid, the inept Clemens brothers gang arrive at the station. They murder Caulder's husband, gang-rape her, burn down her house and leave her for dead. The brothers go on a crime spree, while Caulder recruits bounty hunter Thomas Price to help her get revenge by training her to be a gunfighter. The pair travel to Mexico to have gunsmith Bailey build her a specialized revolver, to be a fast draw specialist. When bandidos surround the house, a gun battle erupts but Hannie is unable to kill a man face to face. Price recommends she give up her quest for revenge but she refuses, telling him to get out and that she was only using him and doesn't need him any more. He leaves, telling her she's a bad liar. As he goes, Price sees the Clemens brothers arrive in town. His attempt to take down Frank goes awry, because Emmet throws a knife into Price's belly, mortally wounding him. Hannie goes after them, killing Frank in a whorehouse. The two brothers swear revenge on her but she gets Rufus in a store when he tries to kill her. Hannie lures Emmett to an old prison for a showdown and almost meets the same fate as Price but Emmett's attempt to throw a knife into her back is thwarted by the Preacher, who shoots it from his hand. Hannie kills Emmett face to face but realizes that Price was right: taking revenge will change her forever.
, then married to Raquel Welch, met with Tony Tenser of Tigon British Film Productions with a view to obtaining funding for a movie starring Welch. Curtis proposed a horror movie or a Western; Tenser, who had always wanted to make a Western, picked that. Tigon put up 100% of the budget, while Curtwel put up their services. Neither Curtis nor Welch took a salary, instead taking profit participation. Before Hannie Caulder was released, Tigon and Curtwel co-produced The Sorcerers, a horror film starring Boris Karloff. Thus, Curtis and Tenser did team up for both a western and a horror film. It was the third film from Curtwel, following A Swingin' Summer and The Beloved. Robert Culp was signed to co star in December 1970. The movie was filmed in Spain, mostly around Almería, beginning on January 18, 1971. Burt Kennedy and the cast were reportedly not paid after the first two weeks of filming, causing tension on set. Stephen Boyd has a brief, uncredited appearance as a gunfighter known simply as "The Preacher". Flamenco guitar virtuoso Paco de Lucía makes a cameo appearance as a Mexican musician. Fast-draw artist Rodd Redwing was a technical adviser to the film, working with Robert Culp. Redwing suffered a heart attack on the plane returning from the filming in Spain and died shortly after landing in Los Angeles.
Release
Hannie Caulder opened in London on November 8, 1971. On 8 September 1971, the British Board of Film Classification announced that the film would receive a AA certificate rating. It is currently a 15 certificate first applied on video in November 1988.
Home media
The film was released on VHS. 1n 1995, a LaserDisc was released on a single extended play disc by Paramount Pictures and distributed by Pioneer Video Manufacturing. It was presented in an Anamorphic Widescreen and a Full Screen version with no extra features. A DVD was issued in the united Kingdom in 2006 with no extra features. It was reissued in 2010 on anamorphic widescreen with theatrical trailer and stills gallery as extra features. In 2011 Olive Films released the film for the first time on Blu-ray disc in the United States with no bonus features. It was again released in the U.S. on November 15, 2016 as a digitally restored Signature Edition Blu-ray with four new bonus features including an audio commentary by Western expert and director Alex Cox, "Exploitation or Redemption?" a twelve-minute featurette on the examination of rape-revenge movies with Ben Sher, a twenty-one minute interview with cultural historian Sir Christopher Frayling on the making of Hannie Caulder and the history of Tigon Studios titled "Win or Lose" and a 10-page essay titled "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" by film critic Kim Morgan in digital and booklet form.
Reception
Box office
The film performed well at the UK box office and was reasonably successful in the United States.
Critical response
In contemporary reviews, the Monthly Film Bulletin described the film as "a disappointing Western" that was an "uneasy course between parody and imitation in an unlikely amalgam of The Wild Bunch and One Million Years B.C., with the odd nod to Myra Breckinridge." The review noted the lack of dialogue from Welch and that the Clemens brothers in the film are allowed some "rather tedious verbal horseplay". However, recent retrospectives and reviews, as in Filmmaker Magazine, saw the film as a fascinating bridge between the classical period, represented by John Ford and John Wayne, and the postmodern age of Peckinpah, Corbucci, and Leone. A bouillabaisse of elements that should not work together but do —lyricism, graphic violence, moral contemplation, broad humour, feminist inquiry — it is a masterful hybrid of tried and true Hollywood conventions and the more confrontational style of the Italian Westerns that supplanted American oaters in the mainstream consciousness.
Influence
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 Pai Mei and the Bride." The character "Price" from the film was the inspiration for the character "Captain Price" from the game series Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1,2,3. In the beginning of "Modern Warfare 1" Captain Price teaches the gamers how to shoot. At the end in Modern Warfare 3 the game ends with the character "Yuri" getting a knife through his body like "Price" did at the end of the film. The characters Price and Captain Price have very similar looks as well and the same goes MacTavish who looks like Bailey. Also notable are the three villains in the movie and three villains in Call of Duty Modern Warfare 1,2,3 that have quite similar looks.
