We received so many enthusiastic responses about yesterday's 'Sucker For Love' double feature post, we thought we'd treat y'all with another double whammy duo......
And today, we could not have found a more perfect pairing of two movies......both British, both overwhelmingly ugly and brutal, each of the toplined by genuine film superstars......and as fate would have it, both of them released in 1971.
We'll kick off with Get Carter (1971), the far more well known and still respected of the two films....
Michael Caine is Jack Carter, a coldly efficient leg breaker, enforcer and hitman in the London gangland community. Suspecting the circumstances under which his late brother died, Carter turns his trip to Newcastle for his brother's funeral into a one man revenge rampage.
And once Jack goes on the hunt for his brother's killers among the Newcastle hoods, the bodies never stop dropping.....sometimes literally off the top of high rise buildings or off the deep end of a harbor (while trapped in the trunk of a car).
Caine mostly maintains his icy cool, but when his face twists in uncontrollable rage, you know bad things are about to happen........and nobody's comin' out of this alive.....
The film, directed in crisp, swift style by Mike Hodges keeps everything gray and grimy, which uniquely suits the moral twilight all these characters inhabit, For Caine's Jack Carter and company, life is nasty and short and we wouldn't have it any other way......4 stars (****)
Not to be outdone in sheer cruelty and sadism, no less than the iconic Richard Burton decided to go down the same blood soaked road the very same year, playing the title character in Villain (1971).
But this film, however, under Michael Tuchner's mediocre dull direction, lacked the blunt force immediacy of "Get Carter". It plays less like a film and more like an overly violent, rogue British TV show and today stands completely forgotten, a blip in the filmography of Burton and everyone else in it.
Not that it doesn't have its moments.......like Caine's film, it boasts a solid, superb cast of British character actors as assorted minions, kingpins and coppers. And Burton's Vic Dakin, modeled on the infamous, psychotic gangster Ronnie Kray (of the legendary Kray twins) is a like a walking volcano, apt to burst into extreme graphic violence at a moment's notice.
Burton uses his distinctive Royal Shakespeare voice and dead-eyed stare to great scary effect here. And like Caine, his instant eruptions of bone deep mania leave dead and disfigured bodies in his wake. Only two characters brings out brief, slight glimpses of humanity and affection in him.....the aged dying mother he cares for (Cathleen Nebitt) and his bisexual boy-toy lover, a footloose, duplicitous playboy-pimp played by Ian McShane.
As expected, an armed robbery planned by Vic and his fellow gang lords goes bloodily awry (a terrific action sequence, by the way).....and the film settles for an abrupt, tedious freeze-frame finale.....(a cornball ploy that immediately dates the movie as early 70's and probably one of the reasons it was quickly forgotten.)
Flatly directed with not a drop of the ominous atmosphere that permeates 'Get Carter', 'Villain' still provides somewhat of a jolly old nasty time of it for anyone in the mood for a jolly old nasty crime thriller. Not a keeper by any means, but we enjoyed it. 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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