USA. 1986.
Crew
Director – Robert C. Hughes, Screenplay – Emmett Alston, Based on the Novel Hunter;s Blood (1977) by Jere Cunningham, Producer – Myrl A. Schreibman, Photography – Tom DeNove, Music – John D’Andrea, Songs – Dan Hamilton, Makeup Effects – Make-Up and Effects Laboratories Inc. (Allan A. Apone, John R. Fifer, Douglas J. White), Art Direction – Douglas Forsmith. Production Company – Hunter’s Blood Limited Partnership.
Cast
Samuel Bottoms (David Rand), Clu Gulager (Mason Rand), Kim Delaney (Melanie), Ken Swofford (Al Coleman), Joey Travolta (Marty Adler), Mayf Nutter (Ralph Coleman), Lee de Broux (Red Beard), Bruce Glover (One Eye), Billy Drago (Snake), Connie Danese (Tracy), Mickey Jones (Wash Pot), Charles Cyphers (Woody), Ron LaPere (Tobe), Burr Middleton (BBQ Man #1), Billy Million (BBQ Man #2)
Plot
David Rand joins his father Mason and Mason’s best friend Al Coleman as they head from Oklahoma over the border into Arkansas to go hunting on backwoods land that Al has bought. They are joined by Al’s cousin Ralph who brings with him Marty Adler, a clueless New Yorker who wants to go hunting. As they stop for provisions, they end up aggravating the surly redneck locals. When an incident in a bar turns violent, they are pursued but make a getaway. As they settle into their camp, they are harassed by poachers and forced to flee as the poachers come hunting them.
The Backwoods Brutality cycle of the 1970s brought a series of raw and savage films depicting innocents from the city being brutalised by backwoods hicks. See classic works in the genre such as Deliverance (1972), The Last House on the Left (1972), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977).
The Backwoods Brutality cycle had largely petered out by the mid-1980s and Hunter’s Blood was made after that point. It could easily be Deliverance remade by way of Southern Comfort (1981). Or maybe something like the less well known Canadian-made Rituals (1978). There were also a number of action movie variants on the Most Dangerous Game scenario – where people are hunted and forced to flee and fight back with their bare hands – made around this period with Avenging Force (1986) and Deadly Prey (1987).
Hunter’s Blood offers such a vision of hick, in-bred rednecks that if the film were talking about people of another ethnicity it would be regarded as outright racism. The first two we meet have a drooling stupidity and an angry hostility, while the arrival at a bar soon after has the protagonists and the locals at each other’s throats, before breaking out into a fight. The group of poachers that turn up later in the film are no better.
You end up surprised because, while Hunter’s Blood demonstrates it is no more than throwaway video filler, it is also quite well made. Robert C. Hughes develops quite a mean-spirited tension out of the showdown between the two sides in the bar. The characters are reasonably well drawn or at least the actors allowed to fill them do well. Samuel Bottoms has an amusing tall tale he spins to the barmaid (Connie Danese) about being Bruce Springsteen’s cousin, while Ken Swofford in particular fills out the campfire scenes with a sense of humour. Things become less interesting once the party become hunted and we get into a Most Dangerous Game-type scenario and action mode fighting off the rednecks, where Hughes follows the established type of this film.
Hunter’s Blood has an interesting cast. Samuel or Sam Bottoms, the younger brother of Timothy, had had a reasonable career with roles in The Last Picture Show (1971) and Apocalypse Now (1979). Clu Gulager has just found some fame in Return of the Living Dead (1985), although had been working in films and tv Westerns going back to the 1950s. There’s Joey Travolta, the older brother of John, who failed to find the fame his brother did and bummed around in a series of bit parts. Here he is cast as the clueless Manhattanite come to the woods. It is hard to think of this ever being a role that John Travolta would deign to play. There is a then unknown Billy Drago as one of the rednecks. Billy Bob Thornton can also be spotted in his first film role as one of the rednecks, although I failed to identify which character was him.
Trailer here
Trailer here