Hannie Caulder (1971)

Directed by Burt Kennedy. Starring Raquel Welch, Robert Culp, Ernest Borgnine, Strother Martin, Jack Elam, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, Luis Barboo.

Standard post-Leone/Peckinpah revenge Western with Welch as a frontierswoman entreating gunman Culp to teach her how to shoot and kill so she can exact payback on the nasty gang who killed her husband and brutally raped her. Wobbly tone negotiates tongue-in-cheek humor and bloody violence, and it’s always risky in a revenge-minded thriller when the villains are so much livelier than the heroes, and get the punchier, more colorful dialogue. Kennedy’s mostly pedestrian direction gets a kick in the pants every once in a while, but more style and atmosphere would’ve helped. Lee makes for a fine addition in the small role of an approving gunsmith (his only Western); however, even in dusty-trail duds, Welch looks far too glamorous for these trappings…unless Avon used to come calling, Pony Express-style. Scribe David Haft went billed as Z. X. Jones, while Kennedy didn’t get credit at all for his rewrite.

61/100