Rent Rogue Male (1976)

Not Rogue Enough - Rogue Male review by JJ

I read the novel many years ago and was interested enough by the cast (never heard of the director) to give it a spin this afternoon. It's not bad, but the presence of so many British TV faces of the '70s and visibly low budget make its origins as a BBC TV play pretty obvious.

O'Toole is a good as a slow-witted English aristocrat and romantic who doesn't do the obvious thing with murderous Nazis on his tail and a fortune in cash in his pocket and bugger off to live quietly in Glasgow or Dublin or Philadelphia or somewhere but - after a series of comic mis-steps worthy of Carry On Escaping - digs a hole in the ground in which to live in Dorset hunting country. Well you would, wouldn't you?

Anyway, it was worth seeing once, just about.

Interesting Film - Rogue Male review by RC

I have been looking around for this film for some time. I vaguely remember the Fritz Lang treatment of the book from 1941 but this is a BBC production from 1976. Well filmed although it has a TV level production standard with a solid cast of well known British actors from the time including Alastair Sim, Harold Pinter, Ray Mort, Mark McManus, John Standing, & Maureen Lipman. Peter O'Toole carries off the lead well as the aristocratic hunter turned hunted, however the DVD extras says how ill he had been and its shows a little. It is perhaps not a thrill a minute stuff as in the 39 steps but is watchable all the same. O'Toole actually says this film is his favourite of all that he starred in.