***SPOILERS****Little known film despite it top cast including 1955 Academy Award winner- for his role in "Marty"- Ernist Borgnine as hunter Lou about a tragic hunting accident that leads to a full scale armed confrontation between the two warring parties of hunters in the wild Canadian woods. It's when James Graham's hunting party opened fire on that of Rex Jeanette, Cliff Robertson, for what Graham felt was invading his party of hunters space Rex's fellow hunter Zeak, Henry Silva, returning fire gunned down one of Graham's men. Not seeing on TV or the the local newspapers the news that the person that Zeak shot was killed Rex came to the conclusion that the Graham party of hunters were out for revenge. And decided to settle the matter or score on their own, without the courts, in a shootout the very next week on the first chance they get to confront, on their hunting trip, each other.
Getting all the guns and military equipment ready Rex, a Major in the National Guard, plans a shootout at the obscure area of Saddle Lake that was set to take place that Saturday when the two groups are set in Rex's mind to meet each other. It was Rex who earlier went to see the late James wife, Kate Reid, to express, as a friend of James, his condolence. It's there that he noticed that she sensed to know that he had something to do with her husband's death as well as smells the whiskey on her breath and her failed attempt, in her drunken state, to get him to go to bed with her. He also realized that her husband's death was kept from the news so his friend in the hunting party were going to settle the score on their own not with the help of the law!
***SPOILERS**** It took a while for Rex's friend Lou who at first wanted none of this, the modern version of the shoot-out at O.K Corral, to join in the action that in the end ended with him as well as Rex's almost entire party of gunman-hunters and national guardsmen-getting killed in the fighting with Rex himself blinded when it was all over. All this death and destruction being the result of a hunting accident showed just how crazy and insane people can get when they let things get way out of hand. And how mob psychiatry can overrule common sense that like in here settled nothing but in fact ended the lives of some dozens of people who were infected by it!
Getting all the guns and military equipment ready Rex, a Major in the National Guard, plans a shootout at the obscure area of Saddle Lake that was set to take place that Saturday when the two groups are set in Rex's mind to meet each other. It was Rex who earlier went to see the late James wife, Kate Reid, to express, as a friend of James, his condolence. It's there that he noticed that she sensed to know that he had something to do with her husband's death as well as smells the whiskey on her breath and her failed attempt, in her drunken state, to get him to go to bed with her. He also realized that her husband's death was kept from the news so his friend in the hunting party were going to settle the score on their own not with the help of the law!
***SPOILERS**** It took a while for Rex's friend Lou who at first wanted none of this, the modern version of the shoot-out at O.K Corral, to join in the action that in the end ended with him as well as Rex's almost entire party of gunman-hunters and national guardsmen-getting killed in the fighting with Rex himself blinded when it was all over. All this death and destruction being the result of a hunting accident showed just how crazy and insane people can get when they let things get way out of hand. And how mob psychiatry can overrule common sense that like in here settled nothing but in fact ended the lives of some dozens of people who were infected by it!