The Last Hunt could have been one of the great westerns, but the final phase of the story seems very rushed and under-developed - several important plot incidents are unexplained. It looks like front office cutting, and I think it happened to the original version, because this film has always seemed strangely unsatisfying to me. Any information about this?
shareI think this movie goes beyond the genre; particularly, Robert Taylor's character is not the western man typically depicted in the westerns. I enjoy this story from the beginning until the end because I follow it watching Charlie Gilson (or I watch it following Charlie Gilson).I find the end neither precipitated nor underdeveloped, but yes, it seems to me "edited" the scenes among Robert Taylor and Debra Paget. I have read on the TCM's web site: ""MPAA/PCA records also indicate that in mid-May 1955, the PCA pressured producer Dore Schary and writer/director Richard Brooks to remove any suggestion that "Charley" rapes the Indian woman, a plot element apparently included in late drafts of the script."
MGM must not have removed those suggestions of rape, because, for me, it was shockingly evident that Gilson (Taylor) was raping the Indian girl (Paget). In fact, I was amazed that it was so "in-your-face" for a fifties film. The Gilson character is absolutely reprehensible (misogynist, racist, murderer, sadist), yet Taylor, because he's Taylor, gets top billing in the film. It was most unusual (perhaps not unprecedented, but unusual) for a star of Taylor's caliber to play such an unlikable character back then, yet still be considered the star of such a film. Like the much better-known movie The Searchers, also from 1956, it was among the first major Hollywood films to question Hollywood's own long-standing negative depiction of Indians.
shareYou posted this on IMDB and are probably not registered here to read this, but in the scene where Gilson is lying on top of the Indian girl kissing her and she is not reacting at all, he exasperatedly says something to the effect of "You know I won't do it when you're like this." and "One day it'll be different", implying that he had not and would not rape her and would wait until she was willing. However, that was just included to please the censors. In the novel he was raping her for sure.
shareI agree with all the posts here, except I did not like this movie at all . So much so that I went to the trouble of making a new account when I couldn't get into my old one . Robert Taylor was so unlikable that it was hard to watch .
I also kept wondering when the movie was going to get started up until it ended .
I love western of all kinds and in my real life was born on a ranch in Texas and have worked my entire life with horses and all the people that come with it good and bad, but this was just a turn off. Probably one of the few (if any) westerns that I would actually call offensive and that's nearly impossible for a woman that likes A Clockwork Orange. I'm VERY hard to offend, but no thank you on this one . I think the only characters I liked were the baby and the Indian boys .
Probably.
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