British Westerns were a very rare commodity indeed and few, if any, were ever box-office draws; so it was curious – to say the least – for Tigon, a company usually deemed a third-rate Hammer Horror wannabe, to want to branch out by tackling such an offbeat genre. Shrewdly, however, they did not presume to know as much about the form as the Americans; therefore, they opted to rope in much Hollywood talent for the task (abetted by few choice homegrown names).
The result is interesting for a number of reasons, yet the low budget involved is betrayed by the overall unassuming nature of the piece and its rather trim duration (85 minutes). 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). Similarly, a scantily-clad Raquel Welch (though an American, she first came to prominence in Britain with Hammer's ONE MILLION, B.C. {1966}) in the title role could do no wrong. 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).
The result is interesting for a number of reasons, yet the low budget involved is betrayed by the overall unassuming nature of the piece and its rather trim duration (85 minutes). 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). Similarly, a scantily-clad Raquel Welch (though an American, she first came to prominence in Britain with Hammer's ONE MILLION, B.C. {1966}) in the title role could do no wrong. 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).