Retro Raunch Revisit: October 2020

BONE TOMAHAWK (2015)
Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, Matthew Fox, Lili Simmons, Kathryn Morris, David Arquette, Sid Haig
Directed by S. Craig Zahler
Released on October 23, 2015 (Happy 5th Anniversary)
Set in the Wild West of the 1890's, Purvis and Buddy are bushwhacking drifters who have just brutally killed 3 campers out in the brush. Hearing horses, they take off into the hills and on a burial site, Buddy is killed by an arrow. Purvis escapes and 11 days later enters the small, peaceful cowpoke town of Bright Hope (on the New Mexico/Texas border) where he buries his stolen loot. Raising suspicion as an obvious robber and taking his dead partner's name, he comes to the attention of Deputy Chicory and Sheriff Franklin Hunt, and is shot in the leg trying to flee while in the local saloon. Hunt has the town Casanova, John Brooder, call for the doctor but Doc is a drunkard, so another physician, Samantha O' Dwyer, instead patches Purvis up in jail. Her husband, Arthur, is a foreman who is nursing his broken, lower right leg at home. That night, unknown attackers kill a stable boy and steal horses. In the morning, Hunt finds Purvis, Samantha, and another Deputy (Nick) all missing from the jail, and finds an arrow. A Native American dubbed "The Professor" tells Hunt it belongs to a vicious group of cave-dwelling cannibals known as troglodytes who reside in the "Valley of the Starving Man." The cautious Hunt forms a posse of aging Chicory who rambles, hobbling-on-a-crutch Arthur who has insisted on joining despite his injury, and dashingly vain Brooder who is unapologetic for the number of Indians he has killed. The 4 men set off to rescue, Samantha, Nick, and Purvis. On their journey and mindful of potential raiders out in the barren plains, Brooder kills 2 men who wander into their camp. During a night ambush, both Brooder and his horse are injured while the remaining 3 animals are stolen.

After the horse is put down, and with the group on foot, Brooder and Arthur get into a punch-up regarding Samantha. As the condition of Arthur's leg is worsened from falling in the fight (as well as from the threat of gangrene), Chicory sets it in a splint, and the 3 men leave him behind and alone to recuperate. Upon arrival at the Valley, the trio are met with a hail of arrows. Injured, they manage to kill 2 of the trogs, and in a retreat, Hunt and Chicory abandon a seriously hurt Brooder, who has demanded he be left behind. Macho to the end, Brooder kills a trog before he himself is killed. Hunt and Chicory are captured and imprisoned in a cave. Samantha and Nick are still alive, but poor Purvis has since been eaten. Nick is then taken from his makeshift cell, stripped, scalped, vivisected in half, and feasted upon by the trogs. Samantha quips that present existence is hard because of "idiots" and figures the remaining number of cannibals to be possibly 12. Hunt remembers he has a flask of opium he took from Arthur which is given to some of the trogs to drink. Only one fatally OD's while another blacks out in narcotic sleep. Arthur's determination knows no bounds. Desperate to get his wife back and in limping & agonizing pain, he tracks his comrades to the Valley and after killing 2 trogs, finds an embedded whistle-like implement on the outside of a dead attacker's throat (actually windpipe) meant as a communication device, as they do not speak. Carving it off, he blows it which summons a trog, who is quickly killed. Back in the cave, the trog leader is pissed to see 2 of his men felled by Hunt. Hunt is yanked from his cell, has the right side of his abdomen sliced open, and a now fire-heated flask shoved into the gash.

He is then shot in the left arm, and stomach by his own rifle. (And only by sheer luck does he avoid having his balls blown off). Arthur shows up at the cave having killed a few trogs, and a still-alive Hunt kills the leader with a tomahawk (in this case, a weapon fashioned from a human hip bone). Samantha and Chicory are freed, while mortally wounded Hunt stays behind to kill the rest of the trogs who will return; to ultimately prevent Bright Hope from being paid anymore of their unwanted visits. Leaving the cave, Arthur, Samantha, and Chicory pass 2 pregnant trog women. Both are mutilated having been blinded and their limbs amputated. Neither female makes a sound. Arthur blows the whistle and their is no reply, thus paving the way clear. Outside and away from the cave, the surviving trio hear 3 gunshots ring out, signifying Hunt has killed the last of the trogs. Safe, the party make their tired way home. If BONE TOMAHAWK was played out as numerous past Western Hollywood classics (e.g. THE SEARCHERS from 1956), we would have noble cowboys heroically banding together and hitting the trail to save a group of innocent settlers, kidnapped by the uncivilized Red Man whose ruthlessness is more implied than visual. But here, with an injection of horror-fusion very much recalling THE HILLS HAVE EYES, the Native Americans have been replaced by man-eating, warrior, savage tribesmen from a degenerate bloodline. And the assembled, flawed group upon whom the imperiled will depend on, not only bicker and have eccentric issues that could derail the mission, but the odds of them rendering successful help, let alone their own survival, is less than slim.

More than the punctuation of realistic, ultraviolent gore & slaughter (which is more restrained than rampant, and saved for the final reel), the movie's key element is its dialogue-heavy slowburn; a building atmosphere of trepidation and dread that sets the highly unsettling tone. That and a top notch cast of excellently, tightly written characters who are more a motley crew than they are seasoned vigilantes; all with their particular backgrounds & insights, combined with deadpan humor and sadness. Each man evokes empathy -- especially in the terror of being cut loose from the rest -- in a brotherhood that barely bonds in their beginning. [Russell as Hunt is a more subdued but just as brave version of his Wyatt Earp in TOMBSTONE]. The interaction of gritty frontier life is also richly presented, running from daily droll to dangerous. [Accusations of racist overtones aside, the indigenous, bestial inbreds are depicted as basically primitive, mud and ash-smeared, animals who rape and eat their own mothers. And we can only shudder to think what happens to some of the offspring]. The lack of a musical score amplifies the ill-at-ease quiet, and tension all throughout, and really intensifies every specific moment that is dark & disturbing. The movie has traces of Eli Roth splatter, some CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST, and even a pinch of FROM DUSK TILL DAWN. I could imagine this being made and written by the Coen Brothers, and dare I say -- wait for it -- Rob Zombie (even though Mr. Boogie Man might benefit more with a better writer than himself). To date, BONE TOMAHAWK is probably the most gruesome and graphically unflinching nod to a spaghetti western yet (easily outbesting THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which also featured Russell, and equally a tad too long at 132min). Lastly, it is also not for the squeamish and weak-stomached.