Articles/Interviews

Barbra Paskin goes to Spain to see Oliver Reed make his first Western

For Oliver Reed, his new film The Hunting Party proved a different sort of challenge for him. For despite his long list of movie credits (he's made nearly thirty films) this is the first time he has appeared in a Western.

In the ten years that Reed has been an actor, he has played a very wide and varied range of characters. To name a few there was the harassed, advertising executive in I'll Never Forget What's Isname; the villainous Bill Sykes in Oliver! directed by his uncle, Carol Reed; and the amorous, defeated Gerald in Women In Love, perhaps his most well-known portrayal. He can now add to his list the role of the brooding outlaw Calder in The Hunting Party.

This is a story about an outlaw (Oliver Reed) who is no longer desirous of leading such a life. He feels that if he could only read he would stand a better chance in the world. So, riding into the town, he kidnaps the local schoolteacher. But the schoolteacher (Candice Bergen) is the wife of a millionaire (Gene Hackman), and, out of sheer boredom teaches in the local school a few days a week. When he hears the news, her husband, who is out hunting at the time with a party of millionaire friends, turns around and instead of hunting animals, begins to hunt for Reed.

Recently I went to Almeria, in Spain, to watch Oliver at work on the film. When I arrived on the set a sheriff stood facing the outlaw, having warned him that people like him were hanged - but here he was back in the town. There was an undeniable tension in the air as the outlaw confronted the sheriff. Directing the film was Don Medford who in the past preferred to concentrate more on making 'pilots' for television. He has been responsible for such series as "The Detectives", and "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.". It is also a well-known fact that out of all the many television 'pilots' he has made only one has failed to be accepted as a series.

A loud shout was heard all over the set - a warning that Medford was ready for action. Don Medford is a dynamic, very energetic director, and quick to compliment the actors. One often heard him say at the end of a scene, "Beautifully done, thank you very much". Always he is in absolute control.

Later I watched them filming another scene. With the cameras set up high in the hills, Don aimed to shoot down into the valley, picking up a long shot of the procession as it weaved in and out of the winding canyon.

Preceding this scene, Oliver Reed and his party had been badly shot up. In the process of losing several men, Reed's closest friend and second-in-command, Mitch Ryan, has been badly injured. Near to death, he pretends that his injuries are slight, and though nearly delirious, begins singing to avoid screaming with the pain. Clutching the tourniquet strapped to his leg and covered all over from top to toe with blood, he is dragged along on a litter through the canyon.

Mitch Ryan is well-known to American audiences for his fine theatre and television performances. He recently completed his feature film debut in Monte Walsh, in which he co-stars with Lee Marvin, playing a hot-tempered, ever eager to fight cowboy. The Hunting Party is only his second film.

The film's romantic interest is supplied by Candice Bergen, the beautiful talented young star of such films as The Magus, The Adventurers and Soldier Blue.

Candice plays a genteel, high-born young lady kidnapped by Reed and his bunch of ruffianly outlaws, and falls irrevocably in love with him.

Director Don Medford is trying to show in this film that the men of Texas and the West are not the kind-hearted cowboys that other films and stories have shown them to be. Instead he depicts them as he believes they really were: rough, crude, brutal men, men to whom killing was an everyday fact of life and who often enjoyed the savagery of the violent deaths they inflicted on their enemies. In this film, though sympathies will probably swing towards Reed, the good cowboys and the bad are of the same breed. These men are shown as they really were.