To say a lot of people, including critics, dislike the movie Shoot is an understatement. Many of them detest it.  Leonard Maltin rated it BOMB.  There are some people, like me, who really liked this movie as a satire on gun enthusiasts. However, there are not enough of us for this movie even to achieve cult status. As a result, it is pretty much unavailable, except for a version of poor quality on YouTube.

At the beginning of Shoot, Rex (Cliff Robertson) wakes up, not gradually with sleepy eyes, but suddenly, as if he willed himself to wake up early that morning. He looks at his watch, the face of which is black.  He presses the button on the side, causing red numerals to light up.  We are used to seeing outdated technology while watching old movies, but when we do so, it generally strikes us as incidental.  In the 1970s, however, featuring an LED watch in a movie was supposed to impress us as being the latest thing, but it looks so out of date now that it provokes derision.

Anyway, the time is 4:02.  He gets out of bed, his wife still sleeping, and starts getting ready.  After performing his daily ablutions, he straps on a .45 automatic. But that is not the only gun he has, for we see a full display of rifles against the wall, including a submachinegun.

He selects a hunting rifle with a scope from his collection and then proceeds to clean and oil it in a manner that is unmistakably sensual.  Holding a rod with a patch secured at the end, he penetrates the barrel, inserting it all the way. After that, he squirts oil on a cloth, which he firmly squeezes. Still holding the cloth, he encircles the barrel with his hand and slowly slides it all the way down. Then he oils the other parts of the rifle, gently caressing them.

He is obviously a veteran of World War II, for as he does all this, we see pictures on the wall that were taken while he was deployed overseas, and we see a photograph of a saluting General Eisenhower.  Ah, those were the days!  At the present time, he is the leader of the local National Guard Unit. Somewhere in the midst of all the pictures is one of his wife.

Speaking of his wife, she is a miserable alcoholic, whom he neglects.  He cheats on her, but his affairs with other women are only a minor form of infidelity.  His true love is for his guns.

Rex leaves in a camouflage outfit, suitable for winter weather.  He arrives at a parking lot where he picks up his four friends, among them Lou (Ernest Borgnine) and Zeke (Henry Silva).  He drives them to his hunting lodge out in the woods. They are all having a good time as they walk through the woods, getting back to nature.

As a hopeful sign that there may be deer close by, one of them says that he saw some “deer shit.”  Zeke says it was “hippie shit.”  When asked how he knows that it was hippie shit, Zeke replies, “It had hair in it.”

Now, that’s not much of a joke, but it reminds us of the title character in Joe (1970), who is also a veteran of World War II, a gun nut, and someone that hates hippies and blacks.

Anyway, after hours of walking, they become frustrated because they haven’t come across any animals. It’s hard to appreciate the beauties of nature if you can’t find anything to kill.  As they reach the bank of a river, they decide to give up, but then they hear something from the other side of that river.  It is another group of hunters, who apparently have not had any luck finding something to kill either. The two groups stare at each other for a long time. Then a hunter from the other side aims his rifle and fires, grazing one of the men with Rex.  In return, Zeke shoots back, hitting the hunter that shot at them right between the eyes.  Both sides take cover and begin shooting at each other, until the hunters on the other side disappear back into the woods.

Of course, this reminds us of The Most Dangerous Game (1932).  In that movie, Count Zaroff has discovered that hunting men is the only challenge left that still excites him.  However, Zaroff never gave his human prey a rifle and ammunition to shoot back with.  I guess he knew that would be too exciting.  This movie, however, takes things to that next step.

Rex and his friends argue about whether to call the police.  Zeke especially does not want to do that since he is the one who killed the hunter on the other side.  But Lou thinks calling the police would be the right thing to do. Finally, they decide to hold off and see what happens. At first, they are relieved when the other hunting party does not report it to the police. Instead, there is only an obituary notice of a man from a nearby town, Ed Graham, that might be the hunter that was killed.

Rex decides to check it out, calling Graham’s widow, pretending to be an old friend and wanting to pay his respects.  Like Rex’s wife, Mrs. Graham is an alcoholic, and she is just as miserable, expressing contempt for the way hunters are so close to one another, closer than they are to their wives.

But then she sympathizes with the way her husband had to put up with all that “bleeding heart gump from his own son.”  She says her son became an assemblyman, adding that he was elected by “the hippies and the junkies and the jigs, not to mention the ecology nuts and the anti-gun nuts.” When her son expressed his dislike for the way his father willfully hurt the wildlife, she told him he should move to India where they worship cows, letting them shit right in the street.

However, she goes on to say that it’s not really about protecting the wildlife:

It’s all part of great plot to disarm the American household so the hippies and the junkies and the jigs can come in whenever they like and beat you half to death and rape you, while their buddies downstairs are taking out the TV sets so they can sell them and buy more heroin.

She tells Rex she has her own .357 Smith & Wesson in her bedroom to shoot any of those hippies, junkies, or jigs that try that stuff with her.  She also tells Rex that she isn’t wearing any bra or panties under her robe, having earlier told him she was “stark naked” when he called her on the phone.  Well, everyone grieves in his own way.

She mention’s her husband’s best friend from college, Marshall Flynn, who was said to be a one-man army against the Japs.  When Rex leaves, we see a man sitting in a car watching him, presumably the friend she was telling him about. Soon after, we see Flynn in Rex’s town in various places, checking things out.

Rex comes to the conclusion that because the other hunters did not report it to the police, that means they prefer to get revenge their own way.  He calls a meeting of those who were involved. Speaking of the hunters on the other side, Rex says, “They know where we hunt. They know when we hunt….  I think those bastards are going to be waiting for us Saturday, and this time, we’re going to be prepared.”

But since they figure the other hunters will bring more men with them on Saturday, Rex says they will have to get more men they can trust too.  One of the extra men suggested is John, a security guard who works in Rex’s store and who is African American.  Zeke doesn’t like the idea of including “that black guy,” but Rex says he is someone they can trust, and that is what matters.  We see Rex talking to John, who apparently agrees to go along, but we really don’t see much of him after that.

However, he does serve an important moral function.  Zeke already expressed his disdain for hippies, and now we see that he is prejudiced against blacks as well.  To that extent, he is like Mrs. Graham, who gave us insight into the attitude held by her late husband, his friend Marshall Flynn, and all the other hunters that were on the other side of the river.  This is the movie’s way of disparaging gun nuts in general.  On the other hand, it is important that we recognize that Rex and his friends are the good guys, relatively speaking, and that is the point of having Rex include John as a man they can trust.  As opposed to this, the men they are going up against would never dream of including anyone in their group who wasn’t white.

In addition to the extra men Rex says they will need, they intend to arm themselves with automatic weapons, along with 100,000 rounds of ammunition, a B.A.R, camouflage helmets with netting, and hand grenades.  These guys miss the war, and they feel good about being real soldiers again.

When Saturday arrives, snow has fallen on the ground, something they seem unprepared for as they keep slipping and sliding while they move down a slope. When they get to the same spot as the previous week, there is no one on the other side.  One of the soldiers, who was not part of the original group, starts talking in a loud voice, saying it’s all ridiculous because there is no one there. In fact, we have been wondering all along if this would happen, that no one would be there, and they would end up looking silly.

Suddenly, the other side of the river comes alive.   Men in white camouflage rise up out of their foxholes after tossing aside the corrugated metal sheets that had covered them, on which the snow had accumulated.  They all start firing their submachine guns and tossing grenades, slaughtering everyone in Rex’s company. Only Rex survives, sort of.  We see him holding his hands over his face as a bloody gob of brain goo oozes out between his fingers.

There is a transition to a nursing home, where Rex has been for a long time, unable to move, barely aware of the light, which reminds him of snow.  He is filled with regret as he thinks of the friends he lost:

God, I wish I had them back.  If only we could go back together and do it right.  If only we’d gotten there first.  Then we could have cut them to pieces, the bastards.