Villain: the classic British gangster film that fell through the cracks

I watched the first two episodes of the second series of the ITV crime drama Whitechapel earlier this month. The first series - about a modern-day Jack the Ripper copycat killer – had been enjoyable tosh. The follow-up series – which substituted the Kray Twins for The Ripper – boasted quite possibly the silliest plot in TV history. 

(From what I could gather, Ronnie Kray’s sperm had been frozen and used to produce another set of Kray Twins to terrorise London – or else someone was making it look like that’s what was happening: after 20 minutes of this bunkum, I lost interest).

Of course, the Kemp brothers had already appeared as the Twins in theThe Krays, in which pop star Ronnie-impersonator, Gary Kemp, surprised us all by being quite convincing, if a touch slight, physically.

But the best, albeit uncelebrated, portrayal of Ronnie – the “fat poof”, as one associate called him just before having his face sliced off - was courtesy of Richard Burton in the 1970 film, Villain. 

You may not have seen it  –  indeed, the body has been so well concealed you may not even have heard of it. It died a death at the Box Office after receiving a brutal hiding from the critics. Richard Burton couldn’t do a cockney accent, look you, they complained, and he made an unconvincing homosexual;  and it was horribly violent.

Now, Burton was caught bang to rights in possession of a dodgy accent – it wasn’t exactly Dick Van Dyke awful, but not far off (but then, name me a distinguished British stage actor who could do decent accents back then - it obviously never got covered at RADA).  As for his unconvincingness as a homosexual, that strikes me as not far off “hate crime” territory – was he supposed to lisp and mince? Besides, I doubt if Ronne Kray fit the popular image of male homosexuals at the time, and, it has emerged in recent years, Burton himself hinted that he’d occasionally played the Pink Oboe in his early years. As for the violence – well, it’s hard to see how you do a film about the Krays without giving some flavour of what the lovable tearaways got up to of an evening: I think what upset the critics was that the violence was so convincing.

Accent or no accent, Burton gives one of his best-ever performances, up there with Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Often, when watching him in a movie, you find yourself wondering just how drunk or hungover he was during the filming (as for Where Eagles Dare, you just want to pass him a glass of Alka-Seltzer through the screen), while wondering how such a great actor managed to sink low enough to accept this particular part. But in Villain, you’re looking at a frightening, complex, rage-filled sociopath – when he produces a cut-throat razor, it’s genuinely chilling.(Don’t click if you’re of a sensitive disposition.)

The script, by Likely Lads and Porridge writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, plus American tough-guy actor, Al Lettieri (Sollozzo in The Godfather), is first class, and, as you’d expect, morbidly funny: the scene where Burton has himself and his dear old Mum driven to Brighton so she can eat whelks is hilarious and weirdly touching. Ian McShane (the love interest), Nigel Davenport (Police Inspector), Colin Welland (his assistant), T.P. Mackenna and Joss Ackland  are all excellent, and any film which features Donald Sinden being menaced in a toilet can’t be all bad. It contains the great, if sanitized, put-down line: “Don’t be a burke all your life. Take a day off, Sergeant”. To top it all, there’s one of the most realistic screen robberies ever filmed, complete with dodgy old cars, cock-ups, violence, mayhem and security poles unexpectedly springing out of suitcases.

If the whole thing reminds you of The Sweeney, it’s because Villain must have served, one presumes,  as the template for the best TV crime series of the 1970s – The Sweeney didn’t appear on our screens for another five years.