Fight cock

Frank Mansfield (Warren Oates) is professionally engaged in cockfights - grows and trains fighting cocks, takes part in tournaments. During a casual duel at the hotel, he loses his best cock and a large sum of money, losing to his old friend and rival Jack Burke (Harry Dean Stanton). After this failure, Frank makes a promise to remain silent until he succeeds and wins the main prize - the medal “Breeder of Fighting Cocks of the Year”. But the next meeting with Jack leads to even greater failure - Frank not only loses the best cock again, but also loses the car with the trailer, and Frank's girlfriend (Laurie Bird) leaves for Jack.

Frank returns home. Mary Elizabeth (Patricia Pearce), whom he has been dating for several years, tells him that she’s tired of waiting, and that Frank should leave cockfights and settle down. But Frank decides to start all over again - he sells his house (for this he has to evict his brother and his wife from there), buys a good fighting rooster and negotiates a partnership with Omar Baradansky - he raises roosters, and Frank is preparing them for battles. Things are going well, their joint business brings good profits, Frank's best fighting cock scores several victories.

At the main tournament of the year, Frank again wins with Jack. After a long battle, both roosters die, but Frank counts the victory and awards the long-awaited medal. Mary Elizabeth, who watched this fight, tells Frank that she is shocked at the brutality of his business and will not marry him.

Script

Julie, wife of the future film producer Roger Corman, drew his attention to the novel by Charles Williford . Williford subsequently wrote the script, changing some details of the plot, after which Corman got excited about the idea of ​​creating a movie about cockfights ^[3] .

Despite the availability of the finished script, Hellman insisted on its completion. For this, Earl Mac Rauch was hired , screenwriter and writer. Together with Hellman, they were engaged in finalizing the dialogues, but due to time constraints they only managed to finalize the love story (the final scene, scenes on the porch and on the banks of the river with Mary Elizabeth) ^[4] .

Shooting

To select locations, cameraman Nestor Almendros, Monte Hellman, Roger and Julie Cormany went to Georgia , one of the few states where cockfights remained legal. Roger Corman subsequently recalled ^[5] :

We found one of the old sites for cockfights. She was probably fifty or a hundred years old. There were traces of chewing tobacco everywhere, old hunched farmers sitting on wooden benches around the fighting pit, throwing money down and screaming heart-rendingly, supporting their cocks. I quickly pulled myself in and started betting.

Original text

We found this old cockfighting arena that must have been fifty or a hundred years old. There were old chewing tobacco signs everywhere, and these craggy old Georgia farmers sitting in wooden bleachers around the dirt pit, throwing down their bets, yelling and screaming for their cocks. I got myself in on the action and started betting.

At first, Monte Hellman was very disgusted with the spectacle of cockfights, he did not like the cruelty of this gamble. But as in the case of the “ Two-lane highway ” he was attracted by a special subculture, people who were passionate about their work. ^[6] As a result, the work was very enthusiastic, all the material was filmed in 23 days. According to Hellman, the film turned out to be half documentary in the sense that the shooting of all the scenes with the fights was carried out on real sites, and almost all the people in the frame, except for the main cast, were really engaged in cockfights ^[7] .

Charles Williford, who was present at the filming of the film, kept a diary and later arranged his notes in the form of the book “Cockfighter journal: The story of a shooting”, published in a small edition of only 300 copies ^[8] .

Installation

Directing and editing all the scenes with cockfights was done by Lewis Teague , who later became the director of the movie " Alligator " ^{[9] [10]} .

The film was not successful at the box office. Roger Corman stated that “Fighting Rooster” was the only unprofitable film of the 70s that he produced ^[11] . Corman ordered the film to be re-edited. Several erotic scenes were added, more cockfights and even exploding cars, the porch scene was cut out. In this form, the film was shown under the names “Born to Kill” ( Eng. Born to Kill ), “Gambler” ( Eng. Gamblin man ) and “Wild Tramp” ( Eng. Wild Drifter ) ^[12] , but this option did not bring arrived ^{[11] [10]} .

The display of “Fighting Rooster” at the International Edinburgh Film Festival in 2006 had to be canceled ^[13] . It turned out that the film at one time could not get a rental certificate in the UK because of real scenes with cockfights. The presence of animal cruelty scenes is violated by , which was highlighted by representatives of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals ^[14] .

The Fighting Cock appeared on VHS in 2001 along with the first Anchor Bay DVD, which included many additional materials: a documentary about Warren Oates, comments by Monte Hellman and Stephen Gaidos, a movie trailer and TV commercials ^[15] . There are at least three other DVD editions from other companies. In 2013, the film was released on Blu-ray by the Japanese company King Records ^[16] .

American arthouse film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum praised the film by comparing Frank Mansfield with Santiago, the protagonist of Heming’s novel “The Old Man and the Sea .” Rosenbaum connects the failure at the box office with the fact that Roger Corman, the producer of the film, tried to promote it as an operational movie ^[12] .

Critics especially note the game of Warren Oates ^{[17] [18]} , whose charisma made it possible to brilliantly play even an almost wordless role. Kate Phipps called the film "an unforgettable work of art created from equal parts of celluloid, philosophy and blood." ^[18]

Cockfights are one of the oldest gambling sports that has been very popular in the United States since the colonial period. Arena for cockfights was a meeting place for old friends, making deals, communicating in an atmosphere of excitement ^[19] . At present, cockfights in the USA are sharply criticized due to criminalization and cruelty to animals connected with large money rates (the practice of using metal spurs or blades that contribute to causing severe injuries is especially criticized) ^{[20] [21]} .

Any participation in cockfights is illegal in all 50 states and the District of Columbia , which gives the film “Fighting Rooster” an educational value: the viewer can get an idea of ​​the rules for conducting fights in the southern states by the 1970s, the peculiarities of preparing birds and the atmosphere of tournaments ^[22] .

• Davin Faraci. The Essential Warren Oates: COCKFIGHTER (1974 ) . Birth.Movies.Death. (October 28, 2010). Date of treatment November 2, 2015.

• Paul Rowlands. COCKFIGHTER (Monte Hellman, 1974 ) . Money Into Light (October 13, 2011). Date of treatment November 2, 2015.

• J.Philip Di Franco. Movie World of Roger Corman = Movie World of Roger Corman. - Chelsea House Publishers, 1979.- 240 p. - ISBN 0877540500 , 978-0877540502.

• Brad Stevens. Monte Hellman: His Life and Films = Monte Hellman: His Life and Films. - McFarland, 2003 .-- 210 p. - ISBN 0-7864-1434-0 .

• Alexander Horwath, Thomas Elsaesser, Noel King. The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s . - Amsterdam University Press, 2004 .-- 391 p. - ISBN 9053566317 .

• Nicholas Pasquariello. Monte Hellman on Corman and Cockfighter . (1976). Date of treatment November 3, 2015.

• Charles Ray Willeford. [1] = Cockfighter journal: The story of a shooting. - Neville, 1989 .-- 91 p. - 300 copies.

• Jonathan Rosenbaum . Cockfighter (1974 review) ( inaccessible link) (November 20, 1974). Date of treatment November 4, 2015. Archived October 26, 2015.

• Plexico Gingrich. COCKFIGHTER . RuthlessReviews.com (April 22, 2009). Date of treatment November 4, 2015.

• Atkinson, Ginnie . Change to Programmed Performance: Cockfighter (English) , Edinburgh International Film Festival (official site) (August 21, 2006). Date of treatment November 5, 2015.

• Festival pulls cockfighting movie (English) , BBC (23 August 2006). Date of treatment November 5, 2015.

• Keith Phipps. Cockfighter (DVD ) . AV Club (April 19, 2002). Date of treatment November 5, 2015.

• Harold Gervais. Cockfighter ( inaccessible link) . DVD Verdict (2001-03-8). Date of treatment November 5, 2015. Archived on September 5, 2015.

• Ed Crews. Once Popular and Socially Acceptable: Cockfighting . The Colonial Williamsburg Journal . The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (2008). Date of treatment November 5, 2015.

• Ed Crews. Cockfighting Fact Sheet . Humane Society of the United States (August 9, 2011). Date of treatment November 13, 2015.

• Cockfighting Animal Liberation Front . Date of treatment November 13, 2015.

• Cockfighter (1974). DVD Comparison: Catcom - Region 0 - NTSC vs. Anchor Bay - Region 0 - NTSC (English) . DVDBeaver . Date of treatment November 13, 2015.

• コ ッ ク フ ァ イ タ ー HD ニ ュ ー マ ス タ ー 版 (Japanese) . King Records . Date of treatment November 13, 2015.

• " Fighting Cock ” on the Internet Movie Database  
• Fighting cock on the Rotten Tomatoes website