Marvellously enjoyable Hammer swashbuckler, I guess you’d call it, set in the late 18th century about smugglers in a coastal village. Some British sailors turn up hoping to bust them – at first you think the captain (Patrick Allen) is the hero and the smugglers (led by Peter Cushing as a pastor/smuggler, and including Michael Ripper) are the baddies, who kill those who betray them… but the officials are shown to be pretty ruthless (Allen resorts to torture), and the smugglers become increasingly sympathetic.
Excellent cast – Cushing is superb (this ranks with Frankenstein and Van Helsing as his greatest Hammer performances), there is brilliant support from Ripper, Allen, a brooding Oliver Reed (the romantic lead) and the others; Yvonne Ronian adds glamour and cleavage. Great spooky stuff in the marshes with scarecrows and skeletons; gorgeous production design and photography; it’s full of atmosphere and the direction is energetic (there’s some things not typical of Hammer, like moving the camera quickly to close up, the using speeded up editing during fight scenes).
I do admit that from time to time the action dragged a bit for me. Also the marriage ceremony at the end seems to take up a lot of time when the characters would want to get out of dodge. But one of Hammer's best non-horror.
NB Trivia note – Night Creatures was going to be the title of Hammer’s adaptation of I Am Legend, cruelly nixed by the censors (for my money the best film the studio never made).
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