Il giorno del toro

The existing reviews for this are useful and I'd agree with pretty much everything that people are saying. As someone who finds Alistair MacLean books and films a guilty pleasure, the decision to film on location and work in a little-documented actual festival gives the film a certain atmospheric appeal. However the subsequent commitment to using this footage appeared to hamper the creative team's ability to tell a coherent story. The frequent use of cutaways and montage such as the bullfight with the killing of De Croyter's daughter, suggests that the availability of the documentary footage drove the film's structure and so effectively killed opportunities to create suspense with more carefully constructed shots. Perhaps more unfortunate is that the Director constructing the shots was the hapless Geoffrey Reeve who managed to increasingly mess up three MacLeans. In addition to Vaccares, he directed the flawed, though undoubtedly watchable, 'Puppet On A Chain', noting however that the memorable boat chase was shot by Don Sharp. Then after 'Vaccares' he helmed the appalling 'The Way to Dusty Death' which confirmed that he was totally out of his depth as a Director in the industry. Writer, Paul Wheeler should also carry some responsibility for the eventual cinematic carnage. Maybe Reeve's TV work was better but he and the writer really didn't haven't a clue how to build suspense and handle this sort of material and as a result, a decade of exciting Alistair MacLean branded entertainments started to lose credibility with audiences. Starting here.

An atrocious waste of time. The story plods along so slowly, I expected the clothing trends to change as the movie went on. Woodenly acted, poorly directed, even Charlotte Rampling with her limited but "70s-pretty-faced" range can't help that, especially after the only interesting thing about her character gets sidelined thirty minutes in. An absolute disgrace to the novel, the south of France, the Romani, and movie-making generally.

I gleaned all that from the first 54 minutes. I couldn't bear another.

I only gave it three stars because of the countryside, the Fiat X-19, and the absolutely abhorrent continuity in the first ten minutes re the gun used. Three stars for putting a silencer on a revolver, it turning into an automatic later in the scene (with a non-suppressed report when fired), then back to a revolver the scene following. That was the entertainment.

Seriously, you're better off watching a 1970's Film Studies end-of-year project.

Of all the adaptations of books by Alistair MacLean, I feel that this qualifies as the worst, but don´t blame MacLean!. It would appear that all that this film shares with the novel is the same title. We have no suspense, no sense of foreboding of mystery, no chance to really empathize with the main characters. We spend the entire duration (or at least I did) waiting for Charlotte Rampling to shed her clothing (for Charlotte, this appears to take a remarkably long time!). Still, a glimpse of Charlotte Rampling´s tits really can´t save this disastrous film. MacLean has once again been kicked into the gutter to endure the sniping of those bitter hacks and nit-pickers who would appear to blame him for all the ills that befall attempted filming of his books. Poor old Alistair must have crawled into a corner and whimpered when this one came out. At least "Bear Island" - which also uses the Maclean name but apparently none of his novel - was a LITTLE exciting. The excitement here is in waiting for the final credits.

The last time I saw this was in high school on the last day of term when you were allowed to watch a movie in class. We were looking forward to watching something like the Karate Kid when one of our classmates, Murphy, excitedly whipped out this tape THAT HE HAD BROUGHT IN SPECIALLY - this film, Caravan to Tedium. To our utter dismay our Geography teacher put it on and the class spent a double period thoroughly disenjoying themselves watching this Alastair Maclean snoozefest - all except Murphy that is, who was lapping it up big time. When our class wasn't collectively daydreaming about shoving Murphy's face into a vat of pig excrement we endured PG rated thrills and Wednesday afternoon level excitement as Charlotte Rampling and David 'personality' Birney run around dodging bullets while attempting to achieve something tiresome. I watched it again today, so the question is, was it better 34 years later? No, not really. Murphy if you're out there, this unfortunate event may have happened in 1986 but you're still a bell end for instigating it.

It's weird, this film; you get the impression that the makers of this snooze-fest spent more time in the local bars than on set. In fact, it's a surprise not to see Harry Alan Towers' name on the credits; it certainly has the flavour of one of his tax-shelter productions but here the motivation behind the project seems to be for all involved to enjoy a prolonged stay in Provence. Despite the fact that the film is supposed to take place all over the region, Les Baux and the area around it stands in for almost everything.

David Birney makes for a spectacularly colourless hero - as Michael Lonsdale says at one point "you're a walking cliché". What Lonsdale is doing in this is anyone's guess. For some reason, the most interesting character, played by Rampling, is sidelined, whereas, regardless of the book, she should have been the central figure because she clearly has the skill to carry the movie (which would have been dull anyway, but at least we'd have got more of something pretty to look at).

All in all a pointless affair that is only worth watching to see how action-less an action movie can be.