Daddy's Gone A-Hunting

The one and only time I saw this movie was with my mother and younger sister at a Drive In theater on Cape Cod when I was ten years old. That was forty years ago, yet the movie made such an impression on us that night, that I've never forgotten it. For years I tried to find it or see it again without success, and then once more made a search last night. At last, here it is, being talked about at least! The sense of creepy fierce tension, coupled with the child like theme song is what I remember most, aside from the closeness and talking that it inspired afterward in my little family as we drove back to our campground. If impressions that last for decades count, this movie is certainly worth tracking down, and I, for one, look forward to seeing it again!

Newly-arrived in San Francisco from the UK, pretty young artist has a meet-cute with a strange, handsome photographer at the bus terminal (he throws a snowball at her head). He fixes her up with a job interview and they move in together, but he has responsibility issues and won't earn his share, throwing her out of her own apartment after she asks him to see a psychiatrist. Melodrama from screenwriters Larry Cohen and Lorenzo Semple Jr., from Cohen's original treatment, skips ahead fitfully; before we know it, the girl has had an abortion, the ex-boyfriend finds out and is furious, and she's gotten married to another man. Purports to be "adult entertainment", but director Mark Robson is still playing the same coy games (when the girl gets undressed to make love, the camera drops to her clothes hitting the floor). Unsettling scenes are entwined with phony soap opera hysterics, while the performers look somewhat unsure of themselves. ** from ****

DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING (1969) is a relatively obscure psycho-thriller that I knew nothing about before watching and ended up loving. It stars British starlet Carol White (POOR COW, CATHY COME HOME) as an aspiriing artist who arrives in San Francisco and begins to romance a young man she meets on the street. Before long she's pregnant, but the relationship sours and she aborts the baby. Unfortunately her former lover isn't about to take that lying down...

This is one of those stories that plays out with an economy of narrative which really works in its favour. There are some great jump cuts to drive the narrative forward while the entire focus is on the psychological cat and mouse games. The cast are all excellent and the characters strike the right balance between likeability and believability. The extended chase climax is a real nerve-shredder!

DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING might be of interest to film academics looking to analyze attitudes about abortion and motherhood in the wake of the 60s sexual revolution. For those wanting a good thriller, they'll have to look elsewhere. Leadenly paced and poorly acted (with one exception), this movie feels like it was made for television. It boggles the mind to think the director was responsible for some of the best Val Lewton chillers back in the 1940s.

The single bright spot is Scott Hylands as the stalker villain. His stare is chilling and his vengeful plot is truly disturbing. Such a shame the woman he's menacing isn't up to snuff-- Carol White's performance is wooden and her character is often unlikable, treating the people around her like garbage when it isn't warranted. This makes it very hard to root for her, a deadly problem for a suspense thriller.

Also, that title song is truly putrid, dated in the worst possible way and almost comical in how it blatantly describes on-screen action. Hard to believe the legendary John Williams was responsible for that travesty-- though to be fair to him, most of the score is alright, if nothing exceptional.

A surprisingly potent and strangely disregarded psycho-stalker picture marked by taut direction and capable performances, it also benefits from its appealing San Francisco location filming. It's a distressingly plausible scenario...girl aborts the child of her former lover, latterly marries another man, and becomes pregnant again. The first lover, now quite clearly a dangerously unbalanced nutcase, shows up to settle the score.

A briskly paced little nail-biter which occasionally goes a tad bit over-the-top, DADDY'S GONE A-HUNTING is ripe for a much-deserved reinvestigation.

6.5/10