Rent Death Hunt (1981)

Violent, Average Manhunt Story - Death Hunt review by GI

A rather ridiculous title which I suspect was chosen as a sort of link to Charles Bronson's earlier and more successful, and interesting, film Death Wish (1974). Beyond the use of the word Death there are no other similarities. Indeed Death Hunt is more narratively linked to Bronson's 1972 film Chato's Land, another far more entertaining film. Based on a true story although this deviates from the real event in many ways, this is essentially a western although set in the far northwest of Canada in 1931. A trapper, Albert (Bronson), upsets some roughneck locals and in self defence kills one of them. This starts a manhunt led by local Mountie, Millen, a hard drinking, cynical and grizzled cop played by Lee Marvin. From this basic and much used scenario you have a series of stereotypical characters including the naive rookie who gets to learn a bit about life to the pointless female character, an underused Angie Dickinson. There's plenty of violence and bloodshed, a boring and somewhat cheesy script and a predictable ending. Effectively the same film emerged a year after this one and was far better. That was First Blood (1982) only the place and time is different. Death Hunt hasn't aged well, it's a B movie masquerading as a main feature.