King Of The Gypsies (1978) Took us a good long time to finally hunt this one down......almost a day after its release, it went into instant obscurity, unavailable anywhere .....
International Mega-Mogul Dini DeLaurentis must have held delusions of 'Godfather' grandeur when he put this one into production...
Like the Brando-Pacino blockbuster, 'Gypsies' portrayed an ethnic criminal underclass, living by their own Medieval morals and nursing lifelong hot blooded family feuds.....and ready to spill real blood when they hit their boiling points......
Gypsies? Those fortune telling exotics given to travelling place to place? And wildly dancing in a whirlwind to the sweet frenzy of violins?
Yeh.....those guys.
Somehow, this gang doesn't pack the same melodramatic punch as the Corleone family. But not for lack overheated trying.
Blustering self-appointed Gypsy 'King' Zharko (Sterling Hayden) outrages clan rival Spiro (Michael V. Gazzo) by abducting his daughter Rose to procreate with Zharko's scumbag son Groffo.
We then fast forward to that younger generation's grown-up years.....Rose (Susan Sarandon) enthusiastically scams the suckers while Groffo (Judd Hirsch) remains a lazy worthless douche. That leads old Zharko to pass the royal torch to Groffo's smoldering, seething young son Dave (Eric Roberts, in his first screen role)
Dave holds no interest in Kingship, preferring to canoodle with his sweet new non-Gypsy girlfriend (Annette O' Toole) while being the over-protective big brother to his adorable kid sister Tita (Brooke Shields)
But Dave underestimates the scum-baggery of Daddy Groffo, who not only plans to sell off tween Tita into an arranged marriage, but sends out Gypsy hitmen to bump off his own son.
Blood boils, tragedy erupts, blood splatters, dancing girls spin like tops and world class violinist Stephane Grappelli sets the soundtrack on fire to keep up with all the nutty melodramatics.
We wish we could promise you a real guilty pleasure wallow but writer-director Frank Pierson ("Dog Day Afternoon" "A Star Is Born") possessed no real imagination or visual flair....... (just imagine if madman Ken Russell or Sam Peckinpah had gotten their hands on this story....)
The actors do make it fun, though. Sarandon never misses a chance to pop her huge eyes, Roberts always looks prepared to self-detonate, Hayden booms his monotone voice for maximum effect, Hirsch embraces his Father-from-hell with gusto, and raspy-voiced Gazzo (the mob turncoat of "Godfather II") enjoys his few chances to ham it up.
(Apparently, Shelly Winters is in this crowd somewhere as Hayden's....uh....Gypsy Queen.....but we'd forgotten her name was even listed in the credits....as for Brooke Shields, it's just another example of "how the hell did she get into this movie?"
Though the film bases itself on a semi-nonfictional novel by Peter Maas, we wouldn't recommend this as any kind of accurate depiction of gypsy life.....(and neither did a lot of gypsies....)
Dino DeLaurentis saw his 'Godfather' dreams for this movie fade away faster than real dreams do when you wake up. But even with a writer-director too reticent and reserved to make this the shameless pleasure it could've been, the cast goes all out to make it watchable......
Which it was.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
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