Fighting Mad

Having visited the real Vienna the year before in 'Flight from Vienna', producer E. J. Fancey (masquerading under the alias 'Edwin Scott') and director Denis Kavanagh this time went north of the border to use Scotland (again without taking sound equipment on the haul since the dialogue is all post-synced and a noisy music score does a lot of the work) to stand in for the wide open spaces north of the 49th Parallel.

Fancey's daughter Adrienne Scott has been promoted to female lead and boxer Joe Robinson (sporting an enormous quiff and carrying the same emotional baggage at having killed an opponent in the ring as John Wayne in 'The Quiet Man') provides the fists to see off the local heavy mob against a picturesque backdrop including waterfalls. Despite the frequent fisticuffs it's all really rather placid and the Mounties of course eventually get their man.

FIGHTING MAD is one of the shortest feature-length films I've ever seen, clocking in at a mere 53 minutes. Even those 1930s-era B-movies were longer than that. It starts muscleman Joe Robinson as a boxer who accidentally kills his opponent in the ring, so he decides to escape to the wilds of the Canadian north and become a lumberjack.

Once there, Robinson becomes involved in the usual plot line involving a gang of criminals trying to evict a stubborn landowner from his plot. It's really an excuse for Robinson to flex his muscles and engage in a handful of slug-fests in which he brutalises a series of opponents who just won't stay down. There's some low rent action and heroics on display here, which makes it a rather amiable viewing experience.

Scotland stands in for Canada and does a pretty convincing job. Robinson was soon to elope to Italy to star in a couple of Italian muscleman flicks like TAUR THE MIGHTY. He might not be the world's greatest actor but then none of these musclemen ever were; they look good on screen and that's what counts.

Integrated into the opening fight scene is footage of 1949's "Champion" with Kirk Douglas as Midge Kelly. Quite a coup to obtain inclusion from that classic film in this Scottish film, made 8 years later.