Shout At The Devil

Shout At The Devil (1976)

Runtime: 128 minutes (US Version), or 150 minutes (British Version)

Directed by: Peter Hunt (please don’t snicker)

Starring: Lee Marvin, Roger Moore, Barbara Parkins, Ian Holm

From: Tonav/AIP

Here is something that I saw early this month but I wanted to save the review for a later date, as I don’t have that much to say about it and plus, I was going to talk about something else but things happened and now I’ll be discussing this.

This is a British movie from 1976 that got released in the States by low-budget masters American International Pictures, although it was edited down by 20 some odd minutes and plus I saw this on THIS-TV, a commercial channel. Not the most ideal thing, but given how rare the movie is, I still watched it that way.

The movie is set in Zanzibar in 1913. Marvin plays a guy named Flynn O’Flynn! He’s a wild guy who likes to drink (not that far from real life, to be honest here) and his daughter (Parkins) is hooked up with proper aristocratic Sebastian (Moore) and they get wrapped up in a scheme involving revenge, ivory poaching, and so on and so forth with the Germans, who controlled the area at the time.

The movie sounds cool on people. It stars some quality actors and is directed by Hunt, who is best known for doing a great job of editing the first few Bond movies (and directing one of them, too); the plot also sounded interesting. Not to mention, it reminds me of the Motley Crue song of the same name.

It may just be me, but while a lot of stuff did go on, much of it wasn’t that interesting to me. Sorry to say; that’s just how I felt. Maybe if I saw it in its proper format (and saw its original British cut, although given that I thought the cut version dragged on and was overlong…) I’d think differently. Based off of what I saw, though, it’s a misfire, although a noble one and it isn’t what I’d call “awful”. I was just hoping it’d be better, an underappreciated gem.

One good thing I can say about the movie is that it has a great fistfight, and it’s on YouTube. It starts at 2:45 in the video. It’s of Marvin and Moore engaging in a long fistfight. I mean, think of the big fight in They Live in terms of length. It’s a raucous affair and I’m glad you can at least see that if you don’t want to try and watch the entire movie.

Also tremendous is the rumor that during filming of the movie Moore and Marvin got into a *legit* fight-who knows over what but given Lee’s known troublemaking ways during the filming of movies and his love of drink…-and apparently Roger whooped his ass and knocked him unconscious! Both guys are definitely tough (they were both members of the military, after all) so I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that.

Anyway, you may enjoy it more than I did. If you do want to see it, it is likely on once in a blue moon on channels like THIS and MGMHD.

I’ll be back Friday night, and it won’t be a foreign film, but it will be something obscure and rather interesting.