OPEN SEASON

Spain/Switzerland, 1974, 104 minutes, Colour.
Peter Fonda, Cornelia Sharpe, John Philip Law, Richard Lynch, Albert Mendoza, William Holden.
Directed by Peter Collinson.

Open Season is an unpleasant film, but one taking on many of the themes of ugly America, the cruelty and arrogant violence under the surface of the average American and how it was reinforced by Vietnamese service and brutalised and how often it cannot be touched by current legal procedures. The violence is offered in a Deliverance-style holiday where your friendly neighbours are hunters of you. They themselves are then hunted by the 'Death Wish' vigilante-type. Although nasty, the film is well, if slickly made, and the three 'ordinary' men (Peter Fonda, John Philip Law, Richard Jordan) tormenting and hunting a couple are convincingly appalling. Definitely for critics-of-American-society fans.

1. The meaning of the title and its tone, hunters and hunted, themes?

2. The purpose of making this film? A thriller? American society in the 70s? The opening of the American flag. the District Attorney and his comments on American men? Was the film in any way exploitive?

3. The use of colour, Panavision, locations,, editing techniques (with flashy style?).

4. The opening irony of the American flag. discussion of rape. praise of American young men. the party and its niceness? The initial ironies and the way they were developed? Audience response to this ambiguity?

5. The presentation of ordinary American situations, their being tested, things turning sour. the questioning of traditional American values? The background of the Vietnam war the availability of weapons, and the basic ugliness in human nature?

6. The portrayal of the three ordinary men? As husbands and fathers, at home, the qualities of their personalities, their going on a hunt?

7. How well did the film make them gradually turn sinister? Their encounter with the couple and giving them a lift. the sense of menace growing?

8. Audience response to their torturing of the couple,, the effect of the torture on each of the three men. lowering of their value and standards, the effect on Nancy and on Martin? The turning of the lift into a hunt to the death? The overtones of boredom with ordinary hunting and human hunting? The ugliness of this?

9. The motivations and reasons for the work. of-these human hunters? The ugliness, the interaction and the effect on each of them? The film's detailed way in showing the personalities of each in the way that they hunted to the death?

10. The beauty of the landscape contrasting with the ugliness of human behaviour and the effect on the audience?

11. The intrusion of their deaths? And the effect on theme before they died? The change of the tone of the film?

12. How did audiences react from their being hunters to hunted? Did audience share the attitude of the unseen hunter and sniper?

13. Their experience of fear. terror, and the effect on them? Their callousness in torture, rape and sexuality,, violence? It being turned on them?

14. How surprised was the audience to find that Wolkowski was the sniper? The relationship to rape. his daughter the retarded grandchild? His presence at the beginning of the film, his presence at the end? His elaborate measures of having his words on tape? The harshness of his comments,, his stalking them to the death? The ironies of their deaths?

15. The legality of Wolkowski pursuing these criminals? Justice and executing them where the law would not touch them? The morality of his executing these men? Did. he have the right to play God? The hunt as an image of Divine justice and vengeance? The three men in their response to being judged?

16. The detail of the action sequences in the hunt? The excitement for audience, the background of justice and execution? .

17. The overall effect of this film? As a thriller, as a moralizing parable about the ugliness of society, America, human nature?