The Honkers *** (1972, James Coburn, Lois Nettleton, Slim Pickens) Classic Movie Review 10,563

Director Steve Ihnat’s 1972 film The Honkers is an action comedy drama with a western setting, and stars James Coburn, who is compellingly amiable in a profile of a middle-ageing, philandering rodeo rider, Lew Lathrop.

He returns to his small home town where his disaffected wife Linda (Lois Nettleton) is now living with businessman Royce Owens (Richard Anderson), and his son Bobby (Ted Eccles) has started to see through his dad.

The Honkers is congenial though not sufficiently out of the ordinary in a suddenly crowded rodeo pic market at that time, and it was upstaged by Steve McQueen in the simultaneous Junior Bonner (though it was also competing with J W Coop and When the Legends Die – all of them good, though none of them did very well at the box office).

Robust rodeo action sequences help; along with the excellent performances of Coburn and Slim Pickens (as Clete), who also sings his own song ‘I’m a Rodeo Cowboy’.

Czech-born actor-director Ihnat died of a heart attack just afterwards on 12 May 1972, aged 37.

The writers are Steve Ihnat and Stephen Lodge.

Also in the cast are Slim Pickens, Richard Anderson, Jim Davis, Anne Archer, Joan Huntington, Ted Eccles, Mitchell Ryan, Ramon Bieri, Wayne McLaren, John Harmon, and Richard O’Brien.

The poster tries to explain the awkward title: ‘A honker is a rough bull or bronc that can’t be broken. Lew Lathrop is a honker!’

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,563

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