Trial by Combat

I was faintly surprised that I'd never heard of this film: Made in Britain with John Mills, Donald Pleasance, Peter Cushing, Brian Glover, Bernard Hill, Margaret Leighton, John Savident and that tarty bird from The Rag Trade - it sounds like the kind of film that should be lodged somewhere in the consciousness of a British movie fanatic. Then I watched it and I immediately realised why it has been consigned to the 'forgotten' files of filmdom.

It's silly and it's stupid.

The plot revolves around a group of toffs who dress up as ye knights of olde to off miscreants they feel the justice system has overlooked - usually at the end of a jousting... stick. They then dump the bodies on the same stretch of road within site of Tower Bridge, wrapped in a bright red banner, from a bright yellow vintage Rolls Royce. Donald Pleasance plays the lead baddie and he's probably the best thing about the whole sorry mess. John Mills is the lead good guy (C-lister Burney's there for the American market) and he seems to be the only one who's treating it with the appropriate degree of levity. Watching actors like Mills, Pleasance and Cushing in a film like this really gives you an insight into what a moribund condition the British film industry was in back in the mid-70s: they'd probably have appeared in a Carry On or Confessions film if they'd been asked.

Avoid at all costs unless you really want to see how low the British film industry had sunk in the 70s.

A British aristocrat played by Peter Cushing is killed by the Knights who say "ni" and it's up to his son coming all the way from America to solve the case. The whole thing is extremely silly, but Donald Pleasence, the head of "The Knights of Avalon" (a society dedicated to the medieval values of live, unfortunately gone vigilante), manages to look fairly omnious in full knights armour. Quite hard to track down these days.

Strange, I don't remember going to "Medieval Times" and actually see people executed. Nor do I remember them taking the body outside and throwing it on the street. Maybe somebody poisoned me.

In any case, this is one strange movie. And actually, it came off funny in an odd sort of way. There was a running gag with animals appearing at the desk of the man investigating the mysterious killings by the "Knights of Avalon".

I found it funny that nobody really did anything about it until the final showdown and the strange somewhat funny ending. The ending being funny because it was abrupt.

Overall, not your typical comedy with knights, but it has its moments. "C"