Rogue Male

I first saw this in the mid 90s on a vhs. Revisited it recently. This film is criminally underrated n it definitely deserves a remake with bigger budget, action sequences n a different ending.

The film is about a hunter who gets a chance to shoot Hitler but misses it. He is then tortured n left for dead by the nazis. He somehow manages to make his way back to his home country. Fearing of extradition n the nazis n local cops after him, he goes under the ground. Yes, literally under the ground. The film turns into a survival thriller n we come to kno that our hunter is the forefather of Rambo. The film is beautifully shot with some amazing countryside locations. The editing, acting n direction is top notch.

This film is based on a book. There is a 1941 film version. The writer of the Rambo series got heavily inspired by the book upon which this film is based on.

Based on Geoffrey Household's rather far-fetched book, Peter O'Toole is British aristocrat "Sir Robert" who lays plan to assassinate Adolf Hitler before the start of WWII. After missing an open goal his plan goes awry, and after some fairly brutal torture at the hands of his captor Michael Byrne, he manages to flee the scene of his own proposed demise and to make it back to Blighty where his solicitor and kindly uncle (Alastair Sim) recommends he keep his head down for fear his plot be publicised, and the country be dragged into war...! The Nazis have not, however, given up on their chase and his efforts to stay out of their sights quite literally drive him underground. It is all just a bit silly, to be honest, and the sort of stiff-upper-lip gentlemanly code of hunter and hunted borders a little too much on the sarcastic to be scary and not enough to be amusing - even though O'Toole does have some quite pithy put downs for his Aryan pursuers. It is just about worth watching for fans of the star, but the rest of it need not have been remade from the superior 1941 iteration.

This is a faithful adaptation of the book by Geoffrey Household. It was made in 1941 as Man Hunt, directed by Fritz Lang. That was also a good film, particularly the George Sanders character, but in no ways is it as good as Rogue Male. This was a TV movie, and the color has faded over the years, but it is extremely provocative of the country in south England. I give it a 9.

I wasn't expecting much, and the horrendous VHS-to-DVD transfer didn't help matters, but the close following of screenplay to novel, and the perfect casting of O'Toole as the vulnerable English aristocrat, makes this TV?!? adaptation a must see.

Much of the quality and suspense of the novel comes through, and the wordiness if you will of the script gave O'Toole the freedom to express his character and the political-vs-personal tensions Household filled _Rogue Male_ with.

This must have been an English production, I can't imagine an American one including the racial characterizations, 30's political details, or the quick repartee.

I first saw this on TV back in the mid 70's and it was definitely a story of the time, when WW2 was still in the forefront of many peoples minds.

Maybe not to the more modern taste, I've always enjoyed this film. It has a feel of the Thirty Nine Steps about it.

Just before the outbreak of WW2, Peter O'Tooles character fails in his revenge assassination attempt on Hitler. With the help of a sympathetic German, and English sailors, he escapes back to Britain and has to go on the run from the British and Nazi authorities who are both after him to return to Germany to answer for his "crime". He goes into hiding in the country, drawing on his hunting experience, and waits to the outbreak of war when his assassination attempt is looked on in a completely different light by the British, who now see him as a potential asset.