Western outfitted Millie Perkins in the foreground on a horse with Jack Nicholson eying her from his horsealr

The Shooting

Directed by Monte Hellman.
With Millie Perkins, Jack Nicholson, Will Hutchins.
US, 1966, DCP, color, 81 min.
DCP source: Janus Films

One of Hellman's undisputed masterpieces, The Shooting is a stark variant of the so-called “acid Western” that gave psychedelic dream, here nightmare, dimension to the genre. Expanding the tradition of the taut and minimalist "revolving poker game" narratives defined in the late studio Westerns of Budd Boetticher and Anthony Mann, The Shooting goes even further by embracing a Gothic abstraction of story that transforms its characters into mysterious woodcut emblems of fate and human destiny, chiseled onto a barren desert wasteland. The script by legendary screenwriter Carole Eastman (Five Easy Pieces, Puzzle of a Downfall Child) brings a cryptic feminist dimension to the dark fable played out, in mesmerizing performances, by Warren Oates, Jack Nicholson and the alarmingly beautiful Millie Perkins. – Haden Guest

Part of film series

Read more

Psychedelic Cinema

Other film series with this film

Read more

All Roads Lead to Nowhere. The Films of Monte Hellman

Current and upcoming film series

Read more

Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

Read more

The Yugoslav Junction: Film and Internationalism in the SFRY, 1957 – 1988

Read more
Peter Sellers wearing a large hat with "ME" embroidered on it, and gripping a Pilgrim-like collar

Carol for Another Christmas

Read more

Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy