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Man of Violence
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| Year: |
1974
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Director: |
Pete Walker
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| Stars: |
Michael Latimer, Luan Peters, Derek Aylward, Maurice Kaufman, Derek Francis, Kenneth Hendel, George Belbin, Syd Conabere, Erika Raffael, Virginia Wetherell, John Keston, Jessica Spencer, Mark Allington, Sheila Babbage, Patrick Jordan
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| Genre: |
Thriller |
| Rating: |
  5 (from 1 vote) |
| Review: |
Moon (Michael Latimer) is a go-between, a mercenary who sells his more than capable services to the highest bidder to apply pressure or carry out whatever work his clients need doing for a fee. But now he has a new client, Sam Bryant (Derek Francis), a rich developer who wishes to stay that way, and seeing as how his businesses are being threatened by Charles Grayson (Maurice Kaufman), who is sending his bully boys round to Bryant's restaurant, he wants Moon to stop him. But Grayson also has an offer...
Man of Violence went by a few titles, including the more straightforward Moon, but was most notable for being one of the last films that Pete Walker made that was still in his earlier, non-horror mode. After this, the chillers proved the most lucrative for him, and as he always made projects where the amount of money he could garner were the most important, that was why he was often described as an exploitation movie maker. This item was very much in that phase, going as far as it could with the sordid stuff while remaining generally a mainstream flick.
Now, The Maltese Falcon is a thriller which mainly takes place indoors, as the characters sit around talking to each other. That worked like a dream, but Walker was no John Huston, so when his film looked as if it was simply a bunch of actors you don't really recognise discussing a plot that was easy to get lost in your attention began to inevitably wander. To his credit, he did try to enliven proceedings by, say, having the conversationalists take their clothes off and continue chatting in the nude, but that was more of a distraction than anything to focus the mind.
Essentially what was happening was that a bunch of ne'erdowells, some more respectable than others, were trying to track down a huge amount of North African gold bullion, which it turned out was being used as ballast in a Volkswagen camper van owned by Bryant, or rather the rock band he funded with the none-more-seventies name of Flossie and the Crunch. In a no way noticable decoration, this van is graced with big signs on the side proclaiming the name of the band, so quite how Moon managed to steal the vehicle and take it abroad without anyone tracking him is one mystery the film neglects to clear up.
Our leading lady who accompanies Moon on his adventures is Angel, played by Luan Peters who in an unfortunate development was the main part of Walker's publicity as her physical assets were declared to include a 42" chest measurement, something she denied but which didn't do her popularity any harm. As the characters can be best described as schemers, Moon becomes our hero almost by default, as both sides are playing him off against the other, or so they believe. With some vaguely surprising scenes, including Moon bedding an M.P.'s boyfriend for information, or some unlucky soul crushed under a car ramp with a long drawn out scream, chiefly this concentrated on the chatter, to somewhat uninteresting effect unless you were truly taken with the trappings of the era. As a change of scenery this does transfer the "action" to North Africa for a stretch, but you might well have zoned out by then. Music by Cyril Ornadel, which makes this seem like an X-rated episode of The Baron or Man in a Suitcase.
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| Reviewer: |
Graeme Clark
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