The Hellions (1961) In our progressively clouding memories we remember catching this on one of those prime time movie showings that CBS, ABC and NBC used to fill up 2 hours of air time.
How they ever managed to latch on to this one, we'll never know. YouTube was the only venue we could find it on.......
A gun-shootin' western taking place in the wild, untamed frontier of 19th century South Africa? Oh yes, by all means.
We remember our initial reaction.....that we'd never seen anything quite like it and loved that it had all the same stuff as American westerns......scuzzy villians! A stalwart lawman! A goofy melodramatic main credits ballad! And one hell of a final combo brawl and shootout!
Watching it again, as cornball and dopey as it is, we still kinda like it.
That opening song is priceless, an apparent attempt to duplicate the melodramatic tunes that introduced "Gunfight At The O.K. Corral and "High Noon".
The casting of the villainous Daddy Outlaw Luke Billings and his four scumbag sons made us smile wide. Dad's played by, of all people, Lionel Jeffries, who almost always appeared as lovable, befuddled old Grandpas. And boy does he make the most of this opportunity....clearly relishing his chance to transform into a vile old codger.
The quartet cast as his spawn do their best to outshine him in hammy posturing.......especially James Booth as the extra rotten apple of the bunch. (You'll also spot Colin Blakely and Al Mullock, famously the third guy along Woody Strode and Jack Elam as the gunfighter trio of the iconic "Once Upon A Time In The West".)
But who can ever stand up to these creeps, who blow into town to terrify (and every so often shoot dead) innocent bystanders?
That can only mean uniformed lawman Sam Hargis (Richard Todd) who's arrested Luke and his calamitous clan before.......which means they're gunnin' for him for sure....
Sam's stuck between the same rock-and-a-hard-place as Gary Cooper in "High Noon". He's the only law in town and the cowering townsfolk won't lift a finger to help him. (To Richard Todd's credit, he plays this stern straight-arrow hero with a mounting sense of genuine fear. )
After Jeffries, Booth and Blakely enjoy a fine old time terrorizing the populace, we finally get to the good stuff the film's song promised from the start......that the murderous Billings family...."died on the Transvaal dust!".
Ooops....maybe that song should have had a Spoiler Alert. But then again, the film's such a blatant imitation of American western tropes, that climax doesn't hold any earthshaking surprises.
We only found out recently that writer-director Ken Annakin originally conceived the film as a spoof along the lines of "Cat Ballou". Certainly Jeffries, Booth and Blakely understood the concept since they wildly overplay their roles as if in a comedy skit. But when Annakin fell ill during shooting, assistants took over and from the overall tone of the film, they never got Annakin's memo or intentions.......
Not that we minded much. The more serious and intense the film becomes, the funnier it gets.
Quite the oddity, this one, sort of the unofficially first British produced western. Cinema curators in the mood for something different might want check it out.....2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).
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