(Can’t recall why i thought that, exactly – the unresolved issue of Boyd’s character, maybe – but i recall that i did think so.)

I agree about the general assessment of the film. It has many great parts, and great potential, but it is flawed. My favorite scene has the master flamenco guitarist Paco de Lucia in an unbilled cameo, playing the acoustic guitar, while Hannie (Raquel Welch) and Thomas (Robert Culp) walk along the seaside as the sun sets. Hannie suddenly takes Thomas’s hand into her own, a gesture with much meaning, considering her husband had been murdered, and she had been raped by the three men who killed him. It is beautifully understated, and shows that she is beginning to rise above her pain and truly appreciates Thomas for being a gentleman and teaching her how to shoot a pistol. Ken Thorne’s soaring violin strings orchestration behind de Lucia’s guitar work in that scene is nothing short of majestic, and coupled with the touching visuals (and gorgeous Spanish coast doubling for the Gulf of Mexico) it lingers in the memory long afterwards. Christopher Lee was also superb in his atypically sympathetic role. A four star moment in a two-and-a-half to three-star movie.

But enough about reality, fantasy is far more fun, and ‘Hannie Caulder’ is another one of those 70s westerns that never gets remembered as much as it should be. While it may be somewhat below the par of something like ‘High Noon’ or ‘Once Upon A Time In The West’, it still has a lot to offer and makes for an entertaining 90 minutes plus, not so much because of the story, a revenge re-tread, but because of the performances of all the cast, a wish list in the 2000s that would remain just that.