Villain - 1971 film review

Villain is a British gangster movie made around the same time as Mike Hodges' Get Carter. If anything, it boasts an even better cast, led by Richard Burton, Ian McShane, Nigel Davenport, Donald Sinden, T.P. McKenna, Joss Ackland, and Colin Welland. The script, rather bizarrely, was written by Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais (more commonly associated with sitcoms), as well as an American writer. And the unsubtle soundtrack, I'm afraid, isn't a patch on Roy Budd's music for Get Carter. But it's an intriguing film, well worth watching, and based on a novel by James Barlow called The Burden of Proof.

Burton plays Vic Dakin, a sociopathic gay gang leader who is devoted to his mother but also susceptible to outbursts of violent temper. Evidently he was modelled on the Krays, His lover is Wolfie, played by McShane. Casting these two very charismatic male actors as a gay pair must have been a very audacious decision in 1971, and perhaps the audiences of that time weren't ready for it. Apparently a gay sex scene between the two men was cut from the film, but several rather nastily violent scenes were left in. Some of the violence in films (and even TV) in the Seventies seems very graphic and shocking when I watch it now. And the portrayal of pretty young women as sex objects is not only crude but also uninteresting. At least Britt Ekland was memorable in Get Carter..

Dakin and his crew get involved in an armed robbery that goes wrong, and the rest of the film deals with the consequences of the crime, as the cops, led by Davenport and Welland, pursue the bad guys with affable remorselessness. Sinden plays a crooked MP, alleged by some to be reminiscent of the late Lord Boothby, whom Wolfie blackmails into providing an alibi for Dakin.

This is a far from perfect film, for a variety of reasons, and not only because Burton's version of a Cockney accent is rather...well, Welsh. Get Carter is, in my opinion, a more sophisticated and effective film, but despite my reservations I must admit that I found myself quite gripped by Villain. The script is interesting, but really it's the star quality of the principal actors that stands out. . 

Endless Night - 1972 film review

Endless Night is one of the very best books that Agatha Christie wrote in the last fifteen years of her life. I think it's under-rated, perhaps because it re-uses one of her earlier ideas for a plot twist. But it does so in a very pleasing way. Not an easy book to adapt for the big screen, though, and the 1972 film version is not, I think, widely admired.

But when I saw it as a student, I enjoyed it, and when I watched it again the other night, I enjoyed it all over again. This was the last film directed by Sidney Gilliat, a talented director whose previous work included the film of Green for Danger, and a writing credit for The Lady Vanishes. He does a fairly good job of handling the plot twists, though of necessity he has to make various changes to the story structure. One or two scenes are a little clumsy, but overall I think it works.

Gilliat had the benefit of an excellent cast. Hywel Bennett, who plays Mike Rogers, a drifter who marries a rich woman, is excellent. At around this time, Bennett was a bankable actor. He was charismatic, and very good at playing ambivalent characters. He'd have been superb as one of Ruth Rendell's amiable sociopaths - what a shame this never happened. And he was very good as the homicidal doctor in the 70s TV version of Malice Aforethought.

Two contrastingly beautiful women, Hayley Mills and Britt Ekland, play crucial roles in the story, while George Sanders is suitably suave as the family lawyer, and Peter Bowles plays the likeable cad with his customary gusto. This is an eerie mystery, about an apparent curse, a magnificent house, and a diabolical murder scheme, and it all makes for good entertainment.

Agatha Christie's Marple - Endless Night - ITV review

Endless Night, screened this evening on ITV, made an appealing Christie for Christmas. Agatha Christie's Marple is not an entirely consistent series, but here, the Queen of Crime's last really good novel was capably adapted by Kevin Elyot, who is a seasoned writer of Christie stories for stage and screen. Introducing Jane Marple into a story in which she did not originally appear was risky, for sure. Yet on the whole Elyot did a highly professional job - even though this did entail Julia McKenzie popping up so often and so unexpectedly that she became a spookier presence than the gypsy whose curse sets the story going.

The brilliance of the original novel, lay in the fact that Christie, writing in the Sixties, repeated one of her most famous tricks, despite its being supposedly unrepeatably. I borrowed the book from the local library shortly after it first came out, and was much impressed. As a student, I also enjoyed the film version starring Hywel Bennett as Michael Rogers, the poor lad who marries a lovely heiress. The film's cast was superb - it also included the likes of Hayley Mills, Britt Ekland, George Sanders and Peter Bowles. I'd rate it as the most under-rated movie ever made of a Christie novel.

Back to tonight's show, which also had an impressive cast. Tom Hughes played Michael, while his architect pal was played by Aneurin Barnard (the young hero of Moonfleet - he's had as impressive a festive season as Jenna Coleman.) Tamzin Outhwaite was almost unrecognisable as Michael's miserable mum, while there were cameo roles for Wendy Craig and Hugh Dennis.

The unusual structure of the plot means that Endless Night is far from orthodox Christie fare. This has caused some commentators to under-estimate it. In fact, it's a good story, and although this version did not strike me as being quite as compelling as the film (though in saying that, I have to admit I've not seen the film for a very long time) nevertheless it made excellent Sunday evening entertainment.