Hunting season (novel)
Jagdzeit is the German title of a 1974 thriller by David D. Osborn ( English original title: Open Season , 1974).
content
Ken Frazer, Greg Anderson, and Art Wallace are old friends welded together after raping a young woman together. It is implied that the three served in Korea. All three lead successful upper-middle-class lives with wives and children. Every year they take time out and go on a hunting trip to a remote cabin in the wilderness. There they drop the civilized facade and kidnap a couple every year. The women are raped and then they organize a manhunt that always ends with the murder of the kidnap victims. On the way to the hut again, they kidnap the lovers Nancy and Martin, who they bring to their hunting lodge in a huge wooded area. Nancy believes that her feminine charms can appease the kidnappers and has excessive sex with them - causing her to hate Martin. The next day, the three hunters reveal their cruel game to the kidnapped: They give the two a half hour head start, then Nancy and Martin are the hunted "game". Martin tries in vain to dissuade the three of them from their plan.
In parallel to these events, the book describes the meticulous preparations of a mysterious stranger who followed Ken, Greg and Art into the woods and who apparently has set himself the goal of murdering them. His motivation emerges late in the novel: his wife was raped by his three friends as a college student, but they were not prosecuted; later the woman committed suicide due to the trauma. The avenger (who, as a neighbor, also sought the proximity of the perpetrators in order to "study" them) has studied the terrain carefully and is cool and calculating. Nancy and Martin are not saved by him, apparently he does not want to leave any witnesses; after the two of Ken, Greg and Art are murdered, he kills the murderous trio of friends. He disappears all the bodies and returns home.
filming
The material was filmed in 1974 with Peter Fonda in the leading role under the title Open Season - Jagdzeit or Los Cazadores. The film contains small deviations from the original: In the novel, one of the kidnappers considers running away with the kidnapped woman and starting a new life; this level does not appear in the film. In the novel, the avenger is the husband of a previous rape victim, in the film it is the father.
criticism
Behrang Samsami praised Osborn's character drawing of the murderers.
literature
David Osborn Jagdzeit , (translated from English by Marcel Keller), Pendragon Verlag, Bielefeld 2011, ISBN 9783865322098