This keeps happening. I find some obscure weird little movie that has Peter Cushing in it and then discover that he's only in the darn film for 5 minutes.
Every single time.
Okay this movie's already got a few points going against it. So what exactly are we dealing with here.
A murder mystery revolving around a bunch of guys that dress up like medieval knights, who kidnaps suspected criminals and then try them in their own personalised court system.
Because the justice system of England isn't doing their job.
Or at least it's not doing its job according to this group of highly wealthy semi-sociopaths who just end up killing the guys who they deem to be criminally negligent.
It's here that the film upsets me because Peter Cushing shows up for 2 minutes to be the one sensible man amongst the group who says you can't go around just killing people because you don't like the way the law system works.
Then he's killed and his son comes over from America to go figure out what happened and then eventually work on an investigation* to take down the group of medieval knights who are committing the crimes.
Intermix for out all of this are strange hijinks involving Medieval Renaissance duels and the detective who has an infinite amount of sweets in his pocket of which he gives to animals.
The film flip flops back and forth between a medieval drama involving a corrupt order and a British detective procedural. And the two don't mix very well.
Oh sure it makes for an interesting film but I can find myself getting invested.
There's even a weird fighting scene in the middle of the film that feels like something out of a Kung Fu flick. And it just adds to the confusion.
But really when you think about it how are these people getting away with their crimes? They kidnap these people in broad daylight using their fancy car which would be easily traceable. Then they take him back to the same building every time where they kill them and then dumped them back in the city. All using the exact same vehicle. The amount of times that something should go wrong and they should be captured by the police is ridiculous. Unless it's implied of the police in London it become completely and utterly useless.
It's another one of those interesting concept but kind of boring execution films.
Maybe I'm just not in the right mindset and I might have enjoyed this more at a different time but at the moment I just couldn't get into it.
And this isn't the type of movie that I would try and re-watch again at some point. There's just not enough energy here to care.
With all that said there is one really good point of this film. Somewhere towards the end a group of knights catch this one guy that they're going to kill for whatever reason. But he's able to escape the main event and then beat the ever-loving crap out of a Knight with some chains.
just to reiterate; We've got some cockneyed British thug beating the ever-living crap out of an English Knight (or at least a man who pretends to be in English Knight.)
Before jumping in a car and having a high speed chase through the countryside while being pursued by men on horses.
It's easily the best part of the film and it comes just a little too late before you start to lose interest. They should have had a little bit more of this earlier in the film. Just something to keep the stakes up.
*If these criminals are being smart they let themselves get captured by our American protagonist and then just wait for the authorities to release them later.
This guy has no connection to any legal system both in the United States or Britain, he works for a freaking oil company. Just wait for the police to release you because information obtained by this a guy can't be used against you in a court of law.
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