Kenny's Rifle. 'Wolkowski', + Other Loose Ends ***POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!***

***POSSIBLE SPOILERS!!!***
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OK some of this has been bugging me for a while and over the weekend I sat down with all 3 versions of the film at my disposal (the British RECON GAME print, the OPEN SEASON Columbia Films edit, and the extended Scandanavian JAKTOFFER print) specifically to see if such is the case, and they are. This will be kind of a long post but for those of you like me who have been fascinated by this story you may be in for a mind boggle, and a familiarity with the book version of the film will help.



First, Kenny's rifle -- After Ken shoots Nancy he joins up with the wounded Artie, hiding in the mill. Ken definitely shoots Nancy with a bolt action rifle and when the two of them note the bluff (or "ledge") he definitely scopes it out while holding the same rifle. But somewhere between the point where the two of them go to climb up to the ledge and when Ken enters the lodge after they split up, his gun has become a Winchester pump shotgun. Possibly the same one that Nancy took from the lodge & drops outside of the mill just before Greg was going to shoot her, but we never see him exchange the two guns and he certainly did not return to the lodge himself to change weapons before going up the bluff.

Also, another related point that has always confused me is, when did Ken get his rifle back from Marty? After following him to the mainland on their boats, Martin manages to bushwhack Kenny and get his rifle away from him, clocking Ken solidly in the face with the rifle butt (we see him spitting blood and teeth as he yells "Artie! He's got my rifle! Artie!!"). Art then tracks down Marty and shoots him in front of that weird half submerged tree and Marty drops the rifle, presumably into the lake which he has waded into. Greg then pulls up in the boat ("You nailed him, Art! Yo!!") and the next time we see them they are pulling up to the dock by the lodge with Martin's body ("Boy, these bankers sure eat well." "You're gonna have to de-bone that one.") but Ken is not with them: We next see him walking merrily through the woods carrying his bolt-action rifle, which he uses to shoot Nancy through the walls of some sort of building she was trying to hide behind.

Now in the book, all three return at the same time with both of the boats and Martin's body and my assumption has always been that in the film Ken had retrieved the boat Martin used to get to the mainland, arrived back at the beach/dock after the others, beached the 2nd boat, was on his way back to the lodge to meet up with Greg and Artie, but instead encountered Nancy at the mill while walking back to the lodge. But if he had, then why didn't Art -- who was hiding in the mill at that point -- at least hear the three shots Ken fires when bagging Nancy? Immediately after he shoots her, we next see Art hiding in the mill after being wounded and up strolls Ken, who has no idea that they are now being hunted themselves at that point. Where did he beach the boat, or more specifically, where was Kenny coming from when he walks up to this building and hears Nancy trying to hide?

What this suggests is that there was another building or structure on the island somewhere that Nancy fled to after Greg is sniped: Ken wanders through the woods, hears her scrabbling about trying to hide, and shoots her through the wall. But in both the book and film there is no mention of another structure on the island other than the lodge and the mill, so Nancy must have been trying to hide in the mill when Kenny shoots her. Again, why didn't Art hear the shots? The gap in the logic is perhaps explained by story changes made during the screenplay adaptation from the book, in which Greg shoots Nancy before being sniped. For whatever reason this was changed in the screenplay to have Nancy escape after Greg is shot, only to have Ken apparently stumble upon her as she tries to hide.

Which raises the question, how did Ken get from the mainland (where they had followed Martin) back to the island to stumble upon Nancy by chance so he can shoot her through the walls of wherever she was trying to hide? He must have retrieved the 2nd boat and come back separately from Greg & Art, but if so what did he do with it? The implication of the way the sequence of events actually plays out onscreen is that Ken was on the island ALL ALONG (!!) and simply walked back around the island from the opposite side while Greg and Art took the boat, suggesting that Marty never even made it to the mainland. And even if so, what happened to the second boat? We never see Kenny in it returning after Martin is bagged, and we never see him retrieve his rifle.

One last thought has to do with the boats themselves -- Why do the Boys specifically use inflateable boats? In the book form this is a PLOT DEVICE to allow "Wolkowski" to be able to destroy them easily with his knife & strand Kenny and Art on the island to be hunted. But as adapted for the film, we see "Wolkowski" using one of them to depart the island at the very end, meaning that all along Ken and Art could have just gotten into one of the boats and left. The reason to have the boats still be inflateable rubber motorboats in the movie seems to be the military/Vietnam connotation of army men using inflateable portable boats since the aspect of their being vulnerable to destruction by means of a simple knife is never utilized.

BUT! in the context of the "extended version" ending with "Wolkowski" more or less confessing his own killings to the police at the very end it makes sense, since he is not attempting to get away with having committed vigilante murder as his actions play out in the book form, where his familiarity with the police at the very end is well explained. The movie version merely implies that "Wolkowski" knew the two police officers who collect him and Petey at the very end, but does not state categorically *HOW* they know each other: One is left to draw their own conclusions as to why he is on a first name basis with the policemen.


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***MAJOR LEAGE SPOILER!!!***STOP READING IF YOU HAVE NOT READ THE BOOK YET AND INTEND TO!!! AND YOU SHOULD, IT RULEZ!!!***
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In the book it is because "Wolkowski" is their captain, and I have always wondered why David Osborn felt compelled to change that, or at least leave it up to the viewer to draw the conclusion that "Wolkowski" was a law enforcement officer himself. It is also important to note while the movie has his character more or less confessing his deeds and being carted away to prison for them, in the book form "Wolkowski" (who isn't "Wolkowski" at all) intends to get away with the killings and had taken carefully planned measures to "cover up" his role in having killed the Boys himself to avenge their rape of Alicia (his wife in the book, his daughter in the movie) and subsequent camping trips with six other couples in the years before they bring along Nancy & Martin as their guests. The phrase used in the book runs "He gave them the penalty that the state no longer allowed, which was death."

Up to now, I had (paste tense!) always been of the opinion that David Osborn was under some form of pressure to change that element of the story to make the film more palatable to what was then a 1974 Nixon era "law and order" society, which might not have been favorable to the suggestion that their own power structures were unjust or corrupt to begin with, up to and including the point that vigilanteism was the only way to ensure that justice would be done to those from the privileged classes at the top of the system who decide to engage in barbarity for their own amusement. Ken, Greg, and Artie are shown as very much "untouchable" pillars of society, and "Wolkowski" himself is depicted as an upper cruster himself. By having "Wolkowski" implied to be a police officer who confesses to the killings at the end and more or less turns over responsibility for Petey to the officer in the car, the film is telling us that those in authority will take care of their own even when some grave misjustice has occurred: There is no way in hell that "Wolkowski"'s actions can be viewed as correct or just -- He is equally guilty of murder as Ken, Greg, and Artie up to and including allowing Matin and Nancy to be killed to ensure that there will be no witnesses to his own murders.

BUT BY HAVING "WOLKOWSKI" THEN PROCEED TO CONFESS TO HIS CRIMES AND BE TAKEN AWAY BY THE POLICE, THE WHOLE REASON TO ALLOW MARTIN & NANCY TO BE KILLED BY THE BOYS TO ENSURE THEIR SILENCE IS RENDERED MOOT!!! If he was planning on confessing and atoning for his crimes, why would he have allowed the boys to kill poor Nancy and Martin? There was no reason to ensure their silence in the version of events shown in the movie's extended "police confession" ending.

Hang onto your hoola hoops, but this may be the real reason for the more abrupt conclusion that forgoes the confession. Unless he was **NOT** planning to confess there was no reason at all to have his character fai to act sooner and save Martin & Nancy from being killed. The only logical conclusion you can make from the extended "police confession" ending is that "Wolkowski" let them die for the hell of it, and was himself possibly even more dangerously insane and indifferent to human suffering & murder than Ken, Greg or Artie. By removing that confession, however, his inaction to save Martin and Nancy is not as troubling once you think about exactly what happens back on the island.

In other words, this may be the real reason for the somewhat shortened conclusion that forgoes the confession. It allows "Wolkowski" to instead be merely a ruthless avenging angel and implies that perhaps he was not present on the island during Nancy & Martin's ordeal to have saved them at all. This may also be why up until the moment he snipes Greg, "Wolkowski"'s presence on the island is never noted or even hinted at. The traditional reason for no scenes on the island showing "Wolkowski"'s presence was that William Holden was ill or otherwise unable to participate in the full shooting schedule for the film, but we already know that at least one scene is missing from all known releases (for home video, at any rate), which is the one where Simon Andreu would have appeared as the Barman. If his scene was removed for whatever reason from the English language versions than it is within reason to presume that some other scenes may also have been removed, namely scenes that show "Wolkowski" on the island observing Martin & Nancy's ordeal, or at least present at a time when he could have saved them.

But since even the extended version with the confession does not include any of these scenes this is just conjecture. The book goes to great lengths to establish that not only was "Wolkowski" present on the island during Martin and Nancy's ordeal, but that he had consciously opted not to save them to ensure there would be no witnesses. At one point he even castigates himself for hiding in the mill when Nancy is present because if she had seen him, he would have had to kill her himself and in a manner that the Boys would not have heard lest they be alerted to his presence. The book also describes in exhaustive detail what happens to the bodies of the five people killed during the story where none of the film versions even touches on the aspect -- all of them simply show "Wolkowski" departing in one of the boats after the killings are over with, implying that after Kenny was dispatched he merely packed up his bag, hopped in one of the boats, and split. The concealment of evidence would only be important if he had planned to try and cover up his own actions (as in the book), but if he was just planning to turn himself in etc, there would be no reason to try and conceal anything.

My conclusion is that the shortened endings work to preserve this story arc, and that once thought about logically, the "police confession" actually raises more questions that it settles -- even if it is more dramatically satisfying.

Other than these points it's a pretty solid script with very few holes, and a subversively twisted condemnation of the whole Nixon era law and order American society any way you slice it. I just wonder if someone caught the gap in logic surrounding "Wolkowski"'s confession and perhaps tried to plug it up by simply removing the confession rather than the ending being edited to spare viewers their outrage at having our whole system put on trial. The extended ending changes the *WHOLE* meaning of the film in a way that goes beyond just redeeming "Wolkowski" for having committed murder and where I used to view the longer version as more appropriate to Osborn's original story I now see the logic in the shortened versions, which allow "Wolkowski" to remain the sort of dark angel hero without raising the question of why he never bothered to save Nancy & Marty.