Hannie Caulder

Plot synopsis:
Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) 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 (Robert Culp) to help her get revenge by training her to be a gunfighter. The pair travel to Mexico to have gunsmith Bailey (Christopher Lee) 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 (Jack Elam) in a whorehouse. The two brothers swear revenge on her but she gets Rufus (Strother Martin) in a store when he tries to kill her. Hannie lures Emmett (Ernest Borgnine) 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.

Tags: revenge, murder, violence

Review:
This offbeat Western could have been another standard revenge flick, but the vivid portrayals from the stars inject lots of spice and no small amount of humor into the proceedings.Raquel Welch portrays "Hannie", and Robert Culp craftily plays "Luther Price", ace bounty hunter, mankiller, and Hannie's mentor.The real stars of this piece are Strother Martin, Jack Elam and Ernest Borgnine.
Another priceless moment is when he presides at a brother's funeral, using a stolen Bible that he cannot even read.Look for Christopher Lee's subtle and well-crafted performance as a former Confederate gunmaker.Not your usual Western, this film is well worth watching despite its flaws.Rated 7.7/10..
After being violently raped, widowed and left for dead by three dirty, cackling brothers, Raquel Welch learns to shoot a gun from hot-headed bounty hunter Robert Culp and hopes to seek her revenge on the mangy trio.
Yes, there are campy moments, but overall this is an interesting movie, especially for the early 70s when the western genre was going into a long hibernation.The worst or campiest elements are the "feminist/sexploitation" aspects...on one hand "Hannie Caulder" wants us to take this story about a woman in the Old West seriously (Hannie is raped, and takes revenge into her own hands) and on the other, it wants to show us Raquel Welch, very sexy and Playboy foldout-ish in a short poncho and nothing else.
Not only that, but it actually plays its nasty bad guys for laughs much of the time, and Ernest Borgnine (as Emmett), Jack Elam (as Frank), and Strother Martin (as Rufus) are priceless as they spend much of their time bickering with each other; Martin is particularly funny.This thing gets off to one Hell of a great start by coming up with a unique way to view a bank robbery: through the barrels of a shotgun!
Hannie Coulder (Raquel Welch) is living along with her hubby when three nasty brothers (Ernest Borgnine , Jack Elam , Strother Martin) kill her husband and she is raped .
Then proceeds to cast the beautiful Raquel Welch (and her tanned, well toned thighs) in a role that in Italy would have been exclusive to the likes of Franco Nero, Anthony Steffen or Maurizio Merli.Three bank robbers on the run from the Mexican Federales stop in a horse station, kill the owner, rape the wife, burn the place down and leave her to die.
By the end of the movie Hannie Caulder has transformed to a gutsy, smart and wisecracking antiheroine and in no uncertain terms has embodied the "angel of death" aspect of the black-clad antiheroes of the spaghetti western - which is also evident in the final fight that takes place in the middle of a sandstorm.A major asset of the film is the cast.
Apart from the ravishing miss Welch, Christopher Lee appears in a brief role as the gunmaker (and it's funny to hear his British accent so far removed from the foggy sets of Hammer studios), Ernest Borgnine yells his way through the film (annoyingly so) as the leader of the three bank robbers and Jack Elam and Strother Martin steal every scene as the other two brothers of this formidable trio..
I first saw this film on TV in early August,1977,and laughed all the way through it.This trio of pathologically stupid villains is first rate,and they obviously had a lot of fun doing their parts.If you can imagine the Three Stooges as homicidal maniacs,you've got a good idea of what to expect.Perhaps it was best to play them that way.If you recall times when these three guys played villains in a realistic fashion,to do otherwise than they did in "Hannie Caulder"would have been much too gross and brutal.Yet,with increasing time and sensitivity,my outlook has changed.Rape and murder are NOT funny.Ask anyone who has been sexually or physically abused,and you'll get the answer.Welch looks good(when has she not?),and as usual does the minimal amount of acting.Culp's portrayal is interesting,being more world-weary,and cynically good-natured than the bloodthirsty,or quietly vindicative characters we've seen in other films(i.e.Nevada Smith).Lee is quite amiable and enjoyable,but I didn't think that he was quite realistic,given the physical location.(He would have been more believable in a British colony or Europe.)So,watch this film,enjoy the antics of the Clemmons Brothers,but remember that rape is an act of power over another human being..
The relationship between Hannie Caulder (Raquel Welch) and Thomas Luther Price (Robert Culp) matures over time and is the really interesting part of this film.
Raquel Welch plays Hannie Caulder, a gorgeous cowgirl who is raped and left widowed by three scuzzy brothers played by Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin and Jack Elam.
Hell bent on revenge, Hannie hooks up with smooth bounty hunter Thomas Luther Price (Robert Culp excellent), learns how to fire weapons and pursues her quarry to the day of reckoning.That is it, it is what it is, Welch is stunningly beautiful and sexy and director Burt Kennedy wastes no opportunities to capitalise on this fact.
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.
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.
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?
That said, the film is fashionably bloody and amoral (its trio of caricature villains – unconventionally played in broadly comic terms by Western stalwarts Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin shoot, pillage and rape their way through the proceedings with abandon and evident glee).
The rest of the cast is made up of: Robert Culp as a conscientious bounty hunter (he always gives back a fraction of the reward money to pay for the victims' funeral expenses!) who befriends the heroine and molds her – against his better judgment – into an avenging angel; a dignified Christopher Lee as a gunsmith with a Mexican wife and a brood of kids in tow (always relishing non-horror parts, this proved his only foray into the Western); Diana Dors barely registering as a brothel madam; and, uncredited, Stephen Boyd intriguingly shrouded in mystery (the finale would suggest that a sequel may have been intended where he would have taken over from Culp as Caulder's mentor, but perhaps the film was not the expected runaway success and the idea was scrapped).Director Kennedy, another genre staple, handles the narrative with customary competence – displaying an eye for wide open spaces (aided in no small measure by a stirring Ken Thorne score) but also a few welcome stylistic flourishes (notably the violation of Welch's character in which the lusty brothers seem to blend into one another as they take turns assaulting her and Borgnine's slo-mo knife throw at Culp's expense)..
Very unusual Western Film for the Year 1971, I was surprised to see  Raquel Welch,(Hannie Caulder) "Legally Blonde" '01 being raped by three(3) men, one being Ernest Borgnine(Emmett Clemens) "Marty"'55 and the director having close-up shots of Hannie Caulder's butt in very tight jeans,  along with a Sheriff patting her on the butt, it is a wonder Hannie did not shoot the sheriff dead on the spot!!
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 tasty dish at that in the form of Raquel Welch in the title role of Hannie Caulder.Three fleeing Clemons brothers having just robbed a bank stop at a ranch to water and maybe steal some fresh horses.
As Steve McQueen had a mentor in gunsmith Brian Keith she gets a good one in bounty hunter Robert Culp.Her quarry as the notorious and probably inbred Clemons brothers are Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin.
You could also compare them to the Clegg family of outlaws in the John Ford classic Wagonmaster.Raquel Welch and Robert Culp make a fine pair of heroes, if they're not clean cut like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans they sure do look tall in the saddle.By 1971 rape and other sexual issues could and were discussed in westerns.
Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, and Jack Elam, play outlaw bumbling brothers in "Hannie Caulder".
After killing her husband and brutalizing her, Raquel Welch seeks revenge, with the aid of a bounty hunter, Robert Culp.
Lee Van Cleef's slapping around the whore in "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly", is duplicated by Ernest Borgnine in the rape scene with Raquel Welch.
"Hannie Caulder" is a British picture that was filmed in Spain, though set in the American Southwest and Mexico; does its best to emulate an Italian spaghetti Western; and has as its star a woman of mixed Bolivian/Irish descent.
(I will give your mind a moment to absorb this international stew while I fondly reminisce on the jolting impact that Raquel Welch had on the puberties of millions of us baby boomer boys, by dint of her appearances in such mid-'60s films as "One Million Years B.C." and "Fathom.") In the '71 picture, Raquel (as the end credits inform us) IS Hannie Caulder, the wife of a rancher, whose life takes an abrupt turn for the worse when the bumbling Clemens Brothers--Emmett, Frank and Rufus (played, respectively, by Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin)--fleeing from a botched holdup, kill her man, gang rape her, burn down her home and leave her for dead.
Wanting revenge, Hannie Caulder comes across a bounty hunter who she constantly begs to help her and after some time he decides to teach her how to be a gunfighter so she can gun down those responsible.This British shot at a copy-and-paste spaghetti westerner mainly sets itself out from the pack, because its protagonist is a gun-touting woman hell-bent on blood shed, while sporting nothing much but a skimpy poncho and being strapped up in some tight pants.
"Hannie Caulder" is an engaging and rather solid western drama that delivers gritty and spirited action spurts where the red stuff runs freely, fruitful characters (well, mainly the three vulgar brothers), a melodramatic script plays it tough with it's highly witty and quite cheeky humour and how can you go pass a small, but neat role by the iconic Christopher Lee playing a gun-maker.While, the main story is about Raquel Welch's character building up a steady rapport with Robert Culp's gunslinger and then putting her training to good use.
Great supporting cast: Robert Culp, Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, Jack Elam, Stephen Boyd, and Christopher Lee. One of those rare movies like Casablanca or The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance that you can watch once a year, and every time it is like watching it the first time..
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?
But Raquel Welch can just barely bring the protagonist to life, and while it's always a hoot seeing dudes like Ernest Borgnine and Jack Elam and Strother Martin playing bad asses (not badasses, they're bag guys here), they're thinly written cartoon characters with one characteristic each, if that.
Inane script does have better moments, like those wise words "Win or lose, you lose, Hannie Caulder" but plot is erratic shambles.Should have taken Raquel on an acting course before the movie.
She also elicits sympathy and you cheer for her when her revenge is complete, although it's tempered with sadness because the new man she loves (Culp) is dead and with her only in spirit.Burt Kennedy filled this movie with tons of humor, courtesy of the Terrible Trio: Strother Martin, Ernie Borgnine and Jack Elam.
As strange as this sounds, no account good for nothing,Strother Martin is a riot!Chris Lee does a nifty character turn as a gunsmith, but it's Culp's cool professionalism along with Welch that drives this solid, entertaining Spaghetti-patterned western, which was produced by her then-husband Pat Curtis and England' Tony Tensor of horror factory, Tigon Films.My friend Cindy and I saw it at the drive-in three times the week it came out..
Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam, and Strother Martin are the villains and Robert Culp is Hannie's reluctant savior/mentor.
She meets a bounty hunter named Thomas Luther Price; the two become lovers and Price agrees to teach her how to shoot like a professional gunfighter.Like a number of earlier Westerns- "The Naked Spur" is an example which comes to mind- "Hannie Caulder" is essentially an examination of the ethics of revenge.
Hannie Caulder is set in the American Wild West where three scumbag brother's Emmtt (Ernest Borgnine), Frank (Jack Elam) & Rusfus Clemens (Strother Martin) rob a bank & in the process kill a few people, they ride off chased by local soldiers.
Eventually they find themselves at a ranch owned by Jim Caulder whom Rufus brutally kills, inside the house the three brother's find Jim's wife Hannie (Raquel Welch) & they take it in turns to beat & rape her before setting the house on fire & riding off into the distance.
Hannie is left for dead but survives & by chance a bounty hunter named Thomas Luther Price (Robert Price) finds her, Hannie convinces him to show her how to shoot properly in an attempt to hunt down the Clemens brother's & take revenge by killing them...This English production was directed by Burt Kennedy & was produced in part by Tigon films who were responsible for a slew of Anglo horror films such as Curse of the Crimsn Altar (1968), The Blood Beast Terror (1968), The Haunted House of Horror (1969), The Beast in the Cellar (1970), Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), Doomwatch (1972) & Virgin Witch (1972) so this cross between an exploitation flick & a spaghetti Western on the surface seemed like a strange choice of film for Tigon to make.
The acting is pretty good by a strong cast including Diana Dors & an unusual role for Christopher Lee, Welch looks nice enough but isn't much of an actress so maybe it's a good thing she doesn't have to say a lot.Hannie Caulder is a neat rape/revenge Western that has some oddball comedy moments in it as well, it's a mixture that doesn't always work perfectly but it's entertaining all the same & definitely worth a watch preferably in it's original widescreen ratio if at all possible.
Hannie Caulder is a 1971 Western movie starring Raquel Welch Ernest Borgnine, and Robert Culp.SUMMARY: The movie opens with Clemens Brothers riding into a Mexican Town and riding up to the bank.
HANNIE CAULDER is a better film than anticipated.Raquel Welch burst upon the movie scene as a sexy bombshell, a woman known for her looks only.
But her acting abilities helped her get better roles and more leads such as this one.The film opens in the old west with Welch as the title character, forced to watch her husband killed by a group of men and raped by all three.
Director Burt Kennedy takes the high road in not giving us more details than we need.HANNIE CAULDER doesn't add much new to either the western or rape/revenge genres but it does tell the tale in a well-crafted manner.
But HANNIE CAULDER is not your typical gunfighter out for vengeance movie, for the gunfighter is a woman and she's played by Raquel Welch, the most beautiful woman of the era.As in all good westerns, the plot of HANNIE CAULDER is basic and simple: the title woman is brutally raped by the three Clemens brothers in the opening scenes after they have murdered her husband.
Raquel Welch was never considered to be a great actress, but I think this is a great performance, especially in her scenes with Robert Culp as Price, we totally understand why this wary bounty hunter would succumb to her ample charms.A great supporting cast, starting with the villains, played by three of the toughest amigos of the day: Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, and Jack Elam, expert scenery chewers all of them.
Spoilers Raquel Welsh stars as Hannie Caulder the woman who watches a band of outlaws (the Clemens family, led by Emmett - Ernest Borgnine) kill her husband, rape her and leave her for dead.
Lovely Raquel Welch is the wife of a stagecoach swing station owner, and the verminous Clemens Brothers: Emmett (Ernest Borgnine), Frank (Jack Elam), Rufus (Strother Martin) gun down her stationmaster husband early in the action.