La texana e i fratelli Penitenza

Burt Kennedy who up to this point on the big and small screens worked with established Hollywood legends and in America, goes to Europe for a dish of pasta. A tasty dish at that in the form of Raquel Welch in the title role of Hannie Caulder.

Three fleeing Clemons brothers having just robbed a bank stop at a ranch to water and maybe steal some fresh horses. They shoot the owner and then ravish his wife who is Raquel Welch.

Imagine Nevada Smith where the mother doesn't die but seeks the three men out herself to even the score and you have Hannie Caulder. As Steve McQueen had a mentor in gunsmith Brian Keith she gets a good one in bounty hunter Robert Culp.

Her quarry as the notorious and probably inbred Clemons brothers are Ernest Borgnine, Jack Elam and Strother Martin. They are as nasty as the three who ravaged Nevada Smith's mother and they all come from the same parents. You could also compare them to the Clegg family of outlaws in the John Ford classic Wagonmaster.

Raquel Welch and Robert Culp make a fine pair of heroes, if they're not clean cut like Roy Rogers and Dale Evans they sure do look tall in the saddle.

By 1971 rape and other sexual issues could and were discussed in westerns. Westerns were more adult at that point though fewer were being made. Burt Kennedy whose films lean to the comic like The Rounders, The War Wagon, The Good Guys And The Bad Guys gets quite serious here. He also for the first time uses a woman protagonist.

It's a good film, but Burt Kennedy cheats a bit to give the film an artificial happy ending. But for that it could have been great.