Verdict
Summary
Based on a red-blooded book by Wilbur Smith (who contributed to the script), Shout at the Devil is the sort of action adventure they simply don’t make anymore (although last year’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare got close), with gritty violence, lust-for-life characters, memorable action scenes, good suspense, and a big score by Maurice Jarre. The chemistry between Moore and Marvin is first-rate, and their centerpiece donnybrook is a hoot. Peter Hunt (On her Majesty’s Secret Service) directed it. It’s long at two and a half hours, but it’s worth it.
Plot:
Two poachers in Africa become a catalyst for destroying a German battleship during World War I.
Review:
Wealthy aristocrat Sebastian Oldsmith (Roger Moore in between The Man With the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me) is bamboozled while vacationing in East Africa, and is left with no money, passport, or papers. As fate would have it, the very man who bamboozled him, an alcoholic Irish poacher named O’Flynn (Lee Marvin) offers him a job with the promise of prestige and adventure, plus a sweet payday at the end: The two of them will lead an illegal expedition into the bush to hunt elephants for their tusks, to be delivered to a sheik. Oldsmith agrees, and the two of them go off with a detail of Africans (and O’Flynn’s mute servant Mohammad, played by Ian Holm), but they run afoul of a crazed German Commissioner who considers O’Flynn his greatest enemy. The German sends his forces out to chase down and eliminate the Irishman, and Oldsmith as well simply because he’s guilty by association. Their near-death riverboat escape leads them straight into a German Navy warship that destroys their little riverboat, but lucky for the two rapscallions, they are marooned on a Portuguese island where O’Flynn’s daughter Rosa (Barbara Parkins) is living. Nursed back to health, the two adventurers are tasked by the British Navy to try to scout the land for German forces, and in the meanwhile Oldsmith and Rosa fall in love and get married, much to the consternation of O’Flynn (who eventually comes around and comes to think of Oldsmith as his son). When the German Commissioner and his forces attack Rosa’s settlement when all her protection is away, the German has her infant murdered, which puts the German at the top of Oldsmith’s and O’Flynn’s list for revenge. When the British Navy entrusts the two compatriots with an even bigger mission – to plant a bomb in the artillery hold of a German warship – the two men and their miniscule army of loyal Africans will have a task of a lifetime.
Based on a red-blooded book by Wilbur Smith (who contributed to the script), Shout at the Devil is the sort of action adventure they simply don’t make anymore (although last year’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare got close), with gritty violence, lust-for-life characters, memorable action scenes, good suspense, and a big score by Maurice Jarre. The chemistry between Moore and Marvin is first-rate, and their centerpiece donnybrook is a hoot. Peter Hunt (On her Majesty’s Secret Service) directed it. It’s long at two and a half hours, but it’s worth it.
Kino Lorber has just released a new Blu-ray edition of Shout at the Devil, and it looks and sounds better than the previous Blu-ray from Timeless Media / Shout Factory, with a nice transfer and an audio commentary by Lee Marvin’s biographer and a film historian, plus the trailer, a two-sided sleeve (gorgeous artwork, both), and a slipcover.
