This 55 years old movie still serves darkromance in the old fashioned way

This 55 years old movie still serves darkromance in the old fashioned way

Well shot and directed but the characters kinda suck.

Well shot and directed but the characters kinda suck.

So, it feels a bit weird to write this, but this movie would be better with, er, fewer rapes.
Produced, I’m fairly sure, as a pretty direct response to ‘The Wild Bunch’ (and specifically, the amount of bloodshed), ‘The Hunting Party’ introduces a load of bad people—Hackman’s sexually sadistic rancher, his crew of weasly, rich, daddy’s boy hunters, a slew of fairly run-of-the-mill henchmen, and Reed’s weird turn as what is supposed to be a handsome rogue (and who’d be vastly more interesting if he wasn’t so freakin’ rapey)—and Bergen as the damsel in distress (who isn’t even the target of the film’s abduction plot).
Once everyone is in play, you get to watch as Hackman decides he neither wants to pay a ransom (‘cause it’s his money) for his wife, but he also doesn’t want her back either, what with her probably (he assumes) carrying a child of rape at the hands of the bandits (‘cause it wouldn’t be his kid). So, using his new-fangled, extra long range rifles and scopes, proceeds to shoot, along with his flunkies, everyone in sight.
Meanwhile, apparently despite the rapes, Bergen’s character falls for Reed’s and hopes to ride off into the sunset with him, because (and again, in spite of the rapes) he’s somehow less of an asshole than her husband.
It’s a dark, grim film and not just because of it sexual politics and gore, but it seems it should also be read as another of the 70s era films that use Westerns as an allegory for the Vietnam War (for just one thing, the long guns here are a pretty obvious stand-in for helicopter gunners or even missiles). And while one could maybe make a case that the rapes which  (mainly) Bergen endures are also analogous, they seem badly mishandled and become too normalized to have the impact needed to make the point.
So yeah, less rapes would have helped the film. A lot.

So, it feels a bit weird to write this, but this movie would be better with, er, fewer rapes.
Produced, I’m fairly sure, as a pretty direct response to ‘The Wild Bunch’ (and specifically, the amount of bloodshed), ‘The Hunting Party’ introduces a load of bad people—Hackman’s sexually sadistic rancher, his crew of weasly, rich, daddy’s boy hunters, a slew of fairly run-of-the-mill henchmen, and Reed’s weird turn as what is supposed to be a handsome rogue (and who’d be vastly more interesting if he wasn’t so freakin’ rapey)—and Bergen as the damsel in distress (who isn’t even the target of the film’s abduction plot).
Once everyone is in play, you get to watch as Hackman decides he neither wants to pay a ransom (‘cause it’s his money) for his wife, but he also doesn’t want her back either, what with her probably (he assumes) carrying a child of rape at the hands of the bandits (‘cause it wouldn’t be his kid). So, using his new-fangled, extra long range rifles and scopes, proceeds to shoot, along with his flunkies, everyone in sight.
Meanwhile, apparently despite the rapes, Bergen’s character falls for Reed’s and hopes to ride off into the sunset with him, because (and again, in spite of the rapes) he’s somehow less of an asshole than her husband.
It’s a dark, grim film and not just because of it sexual politics and gore, but it seems it should also be read as another of the 70s era films that use Westerns as an allegory for the Vietnam War (for just one thing, the long guns here are a pretty obvious stand-in for helicopter gunners or even missiles). And while one could maybe make a case that the rapes which  (mainly) Bergen endures are also analogous, they seem badly mishandled and become too normalized to have the impact needed to make the point.
So yeah, less rapes would have helped the film. A lot.