Every now and then I get a notion to see what happened to ingénues who made an initial splash. In El Dorado (1967) there were three. We all know how James Caan’s career panned out though he had a tricky time of it working his way through low-budgeters like Submarine X-1 (1968) and Journey to Shiloh (1968) graduating to arthouse flops like The Rain People (1969) before making his box office bones in The Godfather (1972). Christopher George I’ve had a look at in The Thousand Plane Raid (1969) and another picture tomorrow.
Michele Carey, James Caan’s squeeze in the Henry Hathaway western, didn’t have the same luck or anyone showing her anything like the same perseverance in her talent. So when I came across this item it looked as if she had found her first top-billed role and since it also featured cult figures Henry Silva (Johnny Cool, 1969) and Keenan Wynn (Point Blank, 1967) I reckoned it was worth a peak.
It was the first rape-revenge movie, with the victim hunting down her attackers, a subgenre that picked up more heft when Raquel Welch headlined Hannie Caulder later that year. But it also seems close cousin to Will Penny (1968) and The Stalking Moon (1969) where the inarticulate make a connection. There’s also racism, “filthy heathen” Native Americans automatically landed with blame, and a rape every bit as savage as Straw Dogs (1971) and an ironically raw ending. But there’s also bits missing, either edited out or never filmed in the first place, leaving large gaps in the narrative failing to explain how the hunters manage to track down the hunted who have ridden off to disparate places. In fact, there’s two sets of hunters, the second bunch not quite sure who it is they’re chasing.
Schoolteacher Alice (Michele Carey) is on the same stagecoach as prisoner Pudge (Keenan Wynn) when it is bushwhacked by the outlaw’s four-strong gang. Everyone else is slaughtered but Pudge and his men make off with sacks of gold and the woman. Staking her out they take turns raping her and then leave her to die.
Native American Chatto (Henry Silva) saves her, nurses her back to health, kits her out in fresh hand-made clothing and teaches her how to fire a rifle, in the course of which romance burgeons (though you might wonder, psychologically, if it’s too soon for a woman raped five times to want anything to do with a man).
Meanwhile, a posse headed by Sheriff Pierce (John Anderson) is searching for the missing stagecoach. When they find the remains of Alice’s clothing and the stakeout, the assumption is this was the work of the Apaches. Since the running time is a lean 84-minutes, Chatto and Alice make short work of tracking down the outlaws, who have, by this point, not yet split up.
Catching them unawares, they, for reasons best known to the screenwriter, allow most of them to escape. Alice, whose marksmanship is not quite up to the mark, nonetheless is capable of putting a bullet in a barrel of gunpowder. One down, four to go.
The sheriff does them a good turn and apprehends the next outlaw (they’ve split up by now) and is questioning him about Pudge when the couple appear and Alice, with vastly improved marksmanship, shoots him from a longer range. The posse, which had previously proved adept at tracking, allows the pair to escape.
In due course, Alice and companion manage to find all the others bar Pudge, one meeting his end on a toilet seat, blasted by his own shotgun, little marksmanship required by her there. Pudge has had the clever notion of hiding out in plain sight by signing on as a cowhand for a herd on the move. Still, for reasons undiscerned, Alice finds him asleep in the dead of night. He’s apprehended, whisked away, but escapes and it’s left to Chatto to bring him back. Pudge is staked out and Alice cuts off his testicles, though she’s kind of shocked at her own savagery. Chatto puts the murdering rapist out of his misery.
But the posse, which for unexplained reasons, happens to be passing, hears the gunshots and comes across Alice in a state of shock beside the Apache hovering over the corpse. The sheriff shoots Chatto while she does nothing to save him. Which is a hell of a note, even given her state of shock, but maybe shacking up with an Apache was deemed worse than being raped by white men and maybe she did that just to ensure she had a protector.
There may be an even more ironic ending being hinted at because – as the camera pulls back from the dead man and the shocked woman and the posse – into view comes a tribe of Apaches watching.
So quite an odd one, good use of the widescreen, but too many scenes of just horsemen riding, and little in the way of characterization. Worth it to see the really nasty side of Keenan Wynn and Henry Silva at his most monosyllabic hero. Hard to put your finger on what’s amiss with Michele Carey’s performance. She could be playing numb, as she had every right to do, given the treatment she endured, but she doesn’t give much away emotionally even when taking revenge or when not saving her savior.
Director Ron Joy only made this one picture as did screenwriter Richard Bakalyan, better known as an actor. The rape scene is well done, filmed from Alice’s POV, a jumble of male faces straining up close, so less of an actress ordeal than Straw Dogs, though the mauling and pawing prior to the act must have been hard for an actress to take.
But you do have to wonder at the filming of this scene – as with The General’s Daughter (1999) – of the real-life vulnerability of the actress and, setting aside any acting skill, the possibility of her feeling humiliated, staked out stark naked not just for the perpetrators to slaver over but the entire (most likely male) crew.
Didn’t prove a breakout out role for Michele Carey. She didn’t make another movie for six years and then it was a bit part in The Choirboys (1977).
Currently on YouTube.
The Magnificent 60s 