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This especial Western with allegoric qualities deals with a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins who wore a hairpiece) bent on vengeance , she forms a group (Will Hutchins and Warren Oates who in his biography he said that he had a crush on co-star Millie) to escort her across a warming desert . Later on , the posse is joined to a cocky gunfighter (Jack Nicholson) until a surprising finale.

Outlandish and difficult western is packed with thrills , exciting pursuits , noisy gun-play and strong performances . Written , produced (along with an uncredited Roger Corman) and starred by Jack Nicholson . Most budget was spent on the salaries for the horse wranglers , who along with the cast were the only union element in the picture . The slight budget was wasted on near constant rains ; in fact , very little was accomplished in the first two days of filming because of the severe flooding in the areas that were chosen as key locations . It is well set against the hot barren background and splendidly photographed landscapes by Gregory Sandor . Cinematographer Sandor shot the bulk of this film using natural light . Made back to back with ¨Ride the whirlwind¨ (where some cowboys are mistaken for members of a band) , both of them bear similar cast , cameraman , director and technicians.

This offbeat and strange motion picture filmed in 1965 was well directed by the maverick Monte Hellman , being firstly shown at the Montreal Film Festival in Canada . His movies are full of similarly independent-minded stars as Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates (his habitual actor) and result to be appreciated by the critics but virtually suffer lukewarm reception by the public . His firsts films were produced by Roger Corman , two horror quickies in low budget , titled ¨The beast from haunted cave (1959)¨ and ¨Back door to hell (64)¨ . After that , he directed two intelligent Western filmed concurrently in 1967 , and ¨Two-lane blacktop (71)¨, describing the underbelly of American life , furthermore ¨Cockfighter (74)¨, a not easily approachable film and sometimes nor even easy understandable . Later on , Hellman has not got his balance right , film-making flops as the Western ¨China 9, Liberty 37 (1979)¨, adventures ¨Iguana (88) and commercial terror as ¨Silent night, deadly night 3 (1989)¨. Nowadays, Hellman only makes failed B movies and television series .

One of Hellman's 'existential' genre flicks from the 60s-70s cusp. Warren Oates and his skittish cohort Will Hutchins are hired by Millie Perkins (the star of "The Diary of Anne Frank") to help her navigate the desert to the next urban centre, or so she says. Soon she is joined by sharpshooter Jack Nicholson, who keeps the boys in line until the surprise ending. There are a lot of neat twists on western convention here - the woman is urbane and sickly, Hutchins is completely incompetent, and as they battle each other everyone is battling the desert as it grinds em down. Unfortunately, several rock solid performances are arrayed around the stilted and extremely irritating Perkins, who is so unappealing that you don't know what everybody sees in her. It's quite majestic for such a tiny-scaled movie, with some truly memorable images, but I also found it more portentous than the content justified, ultimately. The ending is pretty abrupt. Admittedly the sound on my VHS is atrocious which didn't help. Still pretty far out for a low budget western, and enough rewards to at least mitigate the drags.

"The Shooting" is an offbeat 1966 Western directed by Monte Hellman and written by Carole Eastman (using the pseudonym "Adrien Joyce"). The story involves two men (Warren Oates and Will Hutchins) who are hired by a mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) to accompany her to a town located many miles across the Utah desert. During their journey they are tracked and joined by a mysterious black-clad gunslinger (Jack Nicholson) who is known by the woman.

This early Nicholson vehicle is worthwhile if you have a taste for out-of-the-ordinary films. Millie Perkins is fetching and Will Hutchins is a convincing youngster sidekick while Oates is a good every-man protagonist and Nicholson just oozes quiet antagonism. It's easy too see how the 'kid' would be infatuated by the cutie, despite her dubiousness, but it's even easier to understand Willet's grave suspicions. The movie is also a must for anyone who likes lost-in-the-desert flicks.

While the ending seems nonsensical, the answers are there, if you look closely and chew on the details...

***SPOILER ALERT*** (Don't read this paragraph unless you've seen the film). As the story progresses it becomes clear that the woman is hunting Oates' brother who apparently killed a child or a midget, likely the woman's child, close friend or relative. When they finally catch up to him at the very end we discover that the supposed murderer is Willet's TWIN brother who looks exactly like him, which explains his name, Coin (as in, 'the other side of the coin'). Since this is so, why didn't the woman assume Willett (Oates) was the person who killed her child since he looks exactly like the one who did, Coin? Obviously she was informed that Coin had a twin brother living near the town and she felt he would be the best person to track the culprit. In any case, the twin brothers represent the duality of human nature: Willet symbolizes the good and positive side whereas Coin embodies the more destructive aspects of our nature. As such, the Gashade brothers symbolize the two converging sides of the existential coin pertaining to the human experience which come together with catastrophic results at the climax. ***END SPOILER***

Bottom line: "The Shooting" is a worthy bare-bones independent 60's Western with occasional flashes of surrealism and brilliance, as well as a lot of humdrum mundaneness (so be prepared for some slow, dull stretches). It's less straightforward than its sister film "Ride in the Whirlwind," which was made just before this one and on the same (or nearby) locations. Some have called it the first "acid Western" but I wouldn't go that far. It has some weird touches, but not too weird.

The film runs 82 minutes and was shot in Kanab, Utah.

GRADE: B/B- (6.5/10)

Willet Gashade (Warren Oates), a former bounty hunter, returns to his small mining camp after a lengthy absence and finds his slow-witted friend Coley (Will Hutchins) in a state of fear. Coley explains to Gashade that their partner, Leland Drum (B. J. Merholz), had been shot to death two days before by an unseen assassin. Also starring a young Jack Nicholson.

In 1964, Monte Hellman and Jack Nicholson had made two films together, "Back Door to Hell" and "Flight to Fury", which were produced by Roger Corman and filmed back-to-back in the Philippines. This film was very much in the same vein, this time shot back-to-back with "Ride in the Whirlwind". Nicholson's history with Corman is well-known, but Hellman's career also came from Corman. His first directing gig was "Beast from Haunted Cave" (1959), a Corman film, which was followed up with an uncredited stint on "The Terror" (with Nicholson). In fact, Hellman did not really blossom outside Corman's domain until "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971).

The film was written by first-time screenwriter Carole Eastman, who would soon write "Five Easy Pieces", another Jack Nicholson vehicle (and much later the Nicholson film "Man Trouble"). As with many involved, she was a Corman veteran, having been responsible for the music in Corman's "Creature from the Haunted Sea" (1961).

It was not until 1968 that the U.S. distribution rights were purchased by the Walter Reade Organization, the same company that distributed "Night of the Living Dead" (1968). No other domestic distributor had expressed any interest in the films. Walter Reade decided to bypass a theatrical release, and the two titles were sold directly to television. In retrospect, it seems bizarre that this film fell into obscurity, but who could have predicted Nicholson's rise to stardom?

I only gave this three stars because of the good acting from the cast. The story was horrific and exhausting. There are too many plot holes and unexplained events to list. I am shocked at the high reviews of this disaster of a movie. Some see this as complicated and misunderstood. I see it as an utter mess that must have been written by an eighth grader.

"Did I tell you to do something?" - Billy "I don't give a curly-hair, yellow-bear, double dog damn if you did" - Coley

Four people ride across the desert tracking a killer but it is not clear who they really are and who it is they are looking for. In Monte Hellman's subversive western The Shooting, just released for the first time on DVD, Warren Oates is Willett Gashade, a bounty hunter turned mine owner who returns to find his brother Coin missing, his partner dead, and a fellow worker in a state of panic. When a strange woman shows up, the three set out on a journey with an unknown destination that leads to a final bizarre confrontation. The Shooting has more questions than you can find on the SAT and it is often a frustrating challenge to fit the pieces together. Hellman shot the film on a limited budget in eighteen days in the desert country near Kanab, Utah with B-movie producer Roger Corman and a young actor named Jack Nicholson.

It was released to television and did not play in the theater until years later after it developed a cult following in Europe. The quality of the transfer is impeccable but the dialogue borders on the incomprehensible. Slow-witted but good humored Coley (Will Hutchins) is fearful as he tells Gashade that he was asleep when he heard an argument between Willett's partner Leland Drum and Coin. He says that Colin fled, and Leland was shot dead by an unseen gunman and tells Gashade something about Coin having ridden down "a man and a little person, maybe a child," but Coley's not sure about that. Soon, a woman (Millie Perkins) who is not named arrives and offers to pay Gashade to guide her to Kingsley, a town that lies some hours away, beyond a dangerous desert. The woman is abrasive and complaining but Coley takes to her immediately while Willett is distanced and aloof.

Mystery piles upon mystery. When the riding party sets out, the woman asks to be led in the wrong direction without offering any explanation. The woman shoots her horse claiming it was lame but it turns out have no broken bones. When asked why she shot the horse, after a long period of silence, she can only muster a feeble smile. Along the way, Coley, Willett and the woman meet up with Billy Spears (Nicholson), a nattily dressed gunman with a sadistic smirk, and it becomes apparent that the purpose of the journey may be to track down the person or persons responsible for shooting Leland. Beyond that it is anyone's guess as to what the film means and an unforgettable climax does not clear up the confusion.

The director has said that The Shooting is a mirror of the Kennedy assassination where doubt remains about what actually happened on that day, but the connection is murky. Whatever its ultimate meaning, The Shooting is an involving ride full of twists and turns and Jack Nicholson's mighty performance as Billy is worth the price of admission. Actually the meaning may be revealed when Gashade says to Millie, "If I heard your name I wouldn't know it, would I?" She says, "No." Then he says, "then I don't see no point to it." She says, "there isn't any." Perhaps like life, The Shooting doesn't mean anything. It's just there to grab your attention.

There is a fallacy among some critics that good acting can make a bad script into a good movie. That depends on how bad the script is. This was a totally terrible script. I can comment that the actors did a great job, and Will Hutchins outshone everybody. Surprisingly, it was Nicholson who gave the worst performance, but thats because his character was nothing more than a complete ripoff of Jack Palance's gunslinger in "Shane," to every movement and mannerism. The story is bewildering, to say the least. The woman who hires Oates to find the person who accidentally killed what is probably her son or brother, leaves no doubt as to her madness in the desert. So it is insane to think Oates would have gone along with her, much less dragged Hutchins with him, without having extra horses and water. Nothing makes sense in the film, which was the obvious intention, but the characters don't make sense, either. Particularly in their initial decisions to make an insane journey. Everything is quite predictable and utterly depressing. There is no entertainment value in this movie, whatsoever. And nothing learned. Rips off images and scenes from better westerns, and leaves the viewer asleep. Bomb.

As far as westerns go, the 60's were all about Italy and the spaghetti western. By 1967 the ripples Leone's movies are about to make in the American film-making business are around the corner, which leaves The Shooting hanging in a peculiar time and place. Too out there to be appreciated by the traditional western crowd of the 50's and not as cynic and hard-boiled as the spaghetti western-influenced works of the early 70's.

But it succeeds exactly because of that. Monte Hellman crafts a mesmeric, primeval, ultimately existential western that exists in a parallel western universe. A mythic world of some other order. That it refuses to sit down and explain what is going on with the plot is a testament to the film's strength. Not everything needs to be explained. It's all about the impression images make. Impressionistic in that aspect but also surreal. Very. Who is the woman? Who is Billy and the bearded man? As Warren Oates, Jack Nicholson (in an early role here but showing the potential he would fulfill later on in his career) travel through the barren desert, in search of something or someone, The Shooting slowly but gradually peels back the layers of conventional film-making to reveal an off-beat, gritty and fascinating movie. Some of the editing used by Hellman (day to night and vice versa) only serves to disorient the viewer more.

Not only is this a rare, one of a kind western but in all its psychotronic, b-movie glory, it's one of the best of its kind America has to offer. Kudos to Hellman for not refusing to take chances.

Monte Hellman directed this strikingly unique, original, yet experimental western that stars Millie Perkins as a mysterious woman with no revealed name who hires two cowboys named Willit & Coley(played by Warren Oates & Will Hutchins) to track down a man for mysterious reasons, though it appears to be Willit's brother who may have been involved in an accidental death with another cowboy who is later shot dead. Jack Nicholson costars as a cold-blooded gunfighter assisting the woman in the hunt, which leads them to the barren hot desert and a surprise ending, which will no doubt either intrigue or infuriate the viewer, but fine acting and direction keep it on track, especially by Perkins.

This film begins with a cowboy by the name of "Willett 'Willie' Gashade" (Warren Oates) riding into a mining area he and three other men have set up only to find it somewhat deserted. Suddenly, gunshots ring out and he is forced to take cover. He then discovers that the gunfire is coming from a colleague named "Coley" (Will Hutchens) who has recently witnessed the cold-blooded murder of one of the other miners and has fired upon Willie inadvertently. It's also at this time that Coley tells him that apparently Willie's brother "Coigne" (also played by Warren Oates) had accidentally killed a child accidentally in town and had ridden off after their other colleague was shot and killed. Not long after that a strange woman (played by Millie Perkins) rides into town who refuses to give her name but offers Willie $1000 is she will help her get to the town of Kingsley which is about 30 miles away over inhospitable terrain. Initially reluctant at first he subsequent agrees due to pressure from Coley who seems to be attracted to her. Along the way, however, she does several things that arouses Willie's suspicions and they are confirmed once they are joined by a gunslinger named "Billy Spear" (Jack Nicholson). Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that this was a rather odd but still entertaining Western which featured a unique plot and good performances by both Jack Nicholson and Warren Oates. Admittedly, the ending was a bit vague and could have been handled better but all things considered I still enjoyed this film and have rated it accordingly. Above average.

Hollywood, in the 1960s was a locale rife with young visionaries, sometimes stoned, wandering about like starets in Tsarist Russia. But Roger Corman always had an eye out for serious, energetic, responsible young filmmakers, like Monte Hellman, who could put a movie together on the cheap. "The Shooting" has a great virtue: the unique talent of Warren Oates, who could project simultaneously, and with seeming ease, both strength and anxiety. The props, costumes and desert scenery of Kanab all serve this western well, even if its dramaturgy is weak. It seems more like an "idea," stretched out to 82 minutes, than an involving, logical plot.

Criterion what WERE you thinking to put this in your collection? This is one of the worst films of any genre I have ever seen. How exactly do you make a film with Jack Nicholson in it this bad?

Millie Perkins plays a woman of mystery who shoots her perfectly healthy horse because she said it had a broken leg, then she offers the guy who comes running at the sound of the gunshot - Gashade (Warren Oates) - big money to lead her across the desert to a place named Kingsley. He agrees, and his friend Coley, smitten with the girl, comes along. Eventually a gunslinger (Jack Nicholson) joins them. The girl is rude, makes stupid decisions, and refuses to explain herself, the gunslinger keeps threatening to kill everybody for no particular reason, they are following somebody but the girl won't tell them who it is, and for some reason - maybe curiosity, maybe Darwin at work - Gashade won't turn back and just say, in the words of Han Solo, "No reward is worth this!"

The dialogue is non-existent, the acting is bad, and the girl has some kind of aversion to being touched even when it is to render her aid when she faints. The end is confounding, and yet I hear people heap praise on it. I was unfortunate enough to see it in 1971 when it had its only American theatre release. I 've seen it a couple of times recently on Turner Classic Movies, and it has not improved with age.

The Shooting shouldn't be any great shakes when it comes to westerns. That's the case at least in terms of production value. It was shot on a more-or-less-comparable shoestring budget alongside Ride in the Whirlwind by Monte Hellman, and both feature actors like Harry Dean Stanton, Millie Perkins, Warren Oates, and of course Jack Nicholson. They seem to have a tenth of most a common Hollywood budget, and especially with the Shooting you really need to pay attention at times (or just glance repeatedly at the video box description) to understand what's going on. But there's something to it, something that defines it through the mood and execution that drives up the material, provided in what seems to be a one-time-only genre exercise from Five Easy Pieces writer Carol Eastman, to a more interesting plain. As the dead end these characters are facing is going further along, the desert sun is pushing down more and more, a crushing weight on a tense atmosphere where death seems to be just at the blink of an eye.

That's at least as deep as it gets anyway. While Nicholson's Whirlwind script might have dealt better with the existential motifs (whatever they may be in interpretation), the Shooting is good for, at least, its bedrock of a story and some of its acting. Oates plays a cowboy who along with a slightly dim but alert younger cowboy are hired by a woman (just called Woman, played by Perkins with a bit of a b***h streak in a so-so turn almost in spite of a great presence to her character) who wants them to take her across a ways to a small town. Why they're hired they can't figure, and it bugs Oates all the more when another fellow starts to follow them: Billy (Nicholson), a bounty hunter with few words, black gloves and a streak of tough-guy talk whenever he speaks, follows along with them also getting a cut of the stake at hand from the Woman. Turns out there might be more than meets the eye to this mission.

What the Shooting provides best as is a creative sense of the unusual beneath what should come out of some 2nd rate paperback book. There's violence brimming at the seams, and in certain visuals, like the flashback early in the film with the character outside the ten who just keels over in the shade of blue all over. Or the figure of the bearded man with the broken leg out in the desert, who from far away looks like a weird shape until his arm moves (another doomed creature). And the climax, while at the very end needlessly ambiguous to what may or may not be a twin or revenge or whatever (not that it detracts from the mood much), has also a spirit that goes aways to make this just a tinge more than what we're expecting, from the performances and the script.

It takes a little while to start, but once the halfway mark comes and Nicholson comes on the scene- in possibly his first significant bad-ass role- it improves into something like a precursor to the recent Seraphim Falls. An obscure, dated but interesting find from talented indie filmmakers.

While I don't usually watch a steady diet of westerns I sometimes watch them for the actors and I end up liking them very much. And since this was one of Jack Nicholson's earliest movies, I knew that I had to see it.

Willet Gashade (Warren Oates) returns in his cabin only to discover that his brother escaped after accidentally killing a man and his child because he was in a drunken state. The next day a mysterious woman with no name (Millie Perkins) arrives and wants to be escorted in the desert. The journey starts and the more it progresses, the more there are issues: the woman refuses to reveal her true identity and the reason of her mission, and often shoots in the air perhaps for being noticed by an unseen somebody. After some banter the woman reveals about her mysterious chaser: cynical and vicious gunman Billy Spear (Nicholson). The trip continues and then there is the big confrontation with Willet that stops Spear hitting his hand with a stone but we don't see who died in the shootout.

At the beginning it looked promising but as it progressed not only it became like at least 1000 other movies of the genre but a bit confusing. When it was over I scratched my head and had to re-watch the ending because I didn't understood who was killed, how it unfolded and if it wasn't for this I would have given a higher score.

Only of interest for die-hard western fans or Nicholson completist but apart from these two categories of viewers, not worth bothering for.

"One of the best westerns ever made" from "Cult-Director" Monte Hellman! Yeah right! For people who always like to watch the next "best" "cult-movie" this western may be a work of art. In my eyes is just pretentious. Just bland faces using erratic dialog. But Mr. Hellman sure isn't Ingmar Bergman. He hasn't the sensibility nor the talent to handle stuff like this. Just take a look at how he messed up Willefords "Cockfighter". It's really a wonder, that "Ride in the whirlwind" is that good. Maybe Hellman wasn't at the set at all? Even Peter Fonda did a better job with "The Hired Hand". This is the kind of picture that gets a cult-following by viewers (mostly men, i guess) who crave to have found something special. But hey! This isn't even intellectual. It isn't even hard to understand. All you pretentious cineasts: Watch "Last year in marienbad" instead. That will give you mucho stuff to think and guess about. If you' re interested in existentialism - read a book about it. You won't find anything philosophical here. And why is the title of this movie "The shooting"? It should be called "The riding" instead, so every viewer would know what to expect.

Willett Gashade (Warren Oates) returns to his mining camp to find Coley (Will Hutchins) in a fright. Coley tells him that his brother Coin had walked away and their other partner Leland Drum got killed a couple of days earlier. A mysterious woman (Millie Perkins) finds herself at the camp after shooting her lame horse. Willett finds the dead horse not injured. She offers them $1000 to take her to Kingsley. Willett accepts despite not trusting her. They are followed by gunman Billy Spear (Jack Nicholson) who seems to be communicating with the nameless woman.

This has an intriguing premise. It's one that seems foreseeable. Some version of that ending was always expected. The movie brings out the mystery but the intensity could be higher. Oates is solid. On the other hand, Perkins' acting is a little flat. Her role could have been really juicy but she doesn't bring it. It's an intriguing indie western.

Director Monte Hellman has been lauded for shooting two movies at the same time for the rumored price of $150,000. An impressive feat, but a duplicatable one, as long as one isn't concerned about sound. Or plot. Or character development. As Hellman apparently wasn't when he made this film. The dialogue is often incomprehensible, especially unfortunate since this leaves us with a movie depending heavily on shots of people riding to carry it. The Shooting isn't even able to resolve the meagre elements of a plot it has. It sets up a reasonable premise, albeit excrutiatingly slowly, wherein this one guy somehow related to our heroes has been shot for inscrutiable reasons by persons unknown. And this mysterious girl comes along and hires our heroes to escort her to her destination. So they ride. And they ride. They ride for a long time. Boy howdy, do they ride! And then Jack Nicholson shows up and, wouldn't you know it, they ride some more! So we have a bunch of people that we don't really know anything about riding. And eventually, there's some fairly undramatic shooting, thinly living up to the promise of the title, an inexplicable slow motion sequence, and then, while resolving nothing in the process, the movie, mercifully, ends. At this stage, bafflement, followed by a slow sensation that one's better off not thinking about it, is normal.