The Wild Geese **** (1978, Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger, Stewart Granger, Jack Watson, Frank Finlay, Kenneth Griffith, Barry Foster) – Classic Movie Review 5489

Director Andrew V McLaglen’s intense, realistic and enjoyable 1978 all-star British blood-and-guts war adventure movie The Wild Geese stars Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris and Hardy Kruger as Colonel Allen Faulkener, Lieutenant Shawn Fynn and Captain Rafer Janders and Pieter Coetzee.

They are four mercenaries hired in London by British banker industrialist Sir Edward Matherson (Stewart Granger) to rescue a kidnapped and imprisoned central African ex-leader (Winston Ntshona) and overthrow the country’s vicious dictator in Africa to restore him to his presidential position.

The movie has quite a lot of good things going for it. There is wham-bam slap-up action from American director McLaglen. Reginald Rose’s screenplay from Daniel Carney’s unpublished novel titled The Thin White Line is bright and breezy. And there are game and winning performances from the esteemed old-time performers.

Also in the cast are Jack Watson, Frank Finlay, Kenneth Griffith, Barry Foster, John Kani, Jeff Corey, Ronald Fraser, Percy Herbert, Patrick Allen, Jane Hylton, Ian Yule, Brook Williams, Glyn Baker, Rosalind Lloyd, David Ladd, Paul Spurrier, Joe Col,e Trevor Lloyd, Patrick Holt, Terence Longdon, Valerie Leon, John Alderson, and Martin Grace.

The Wild Geese runs 133 minutes, is released in the UK by Rank and in the US by Allied Artists, is shot in widescreen by Jack Hildyard, is produced by Euan Lloyd and Erwin C Dietrich, is scored by Roy Budd and is set designed by Syd Cain.

The theme song Flight of the Wild Geese is written and performed by Joan Armatrading.

There was controversy over filming in South Africa during the apartheid regime and over of the film’s portrayal of African characters, and the London premiere was picketed.

The film is named after the Wild Goose flag and shoulder patch used by Michael ‘Mad Mike’ Hoare’s Five Commando, ANC, originally inspired by a 17th-century Irish mercenary army. Corgi Books later published Carney’s novel as The Wild Geese.

The novel was inspired by rumours about the 1968 landing of a mysterious plane in Rhodesia supposedly loaded with mercenaries and an African president believed to have been the dying Moïse Tshombe.

Despite the collapse of its American distributor Allied Artists and the lack of American stars, it was a popular commercial success and a sequel followed in 1985, Wild Geese II, also produced by Lloyd and written by Rose, but with an unrelated different story (though by the same author) and a different cast of Scott Glenn, Barbara Carrera, Edward Fox and Laurence Olivier.

McLaglen and Lloyd went on to make The Sea Wolves (1980) with a similar cast and crew, including Roger Moore.

RIP Andrew V McLaglen, who died on 30 August 2014, aged 94. He also made North Sea Hijack [ffolkes] (1980) with Moore.

RIP Euan Lloyd, who died on 2 July 2016, aged 92. He started out as an assistant manager at the ABC Walsall cinema, became a film publicist and then an independent producer. In the Fifties, he was married to Jane Hylton, who plays Mrs Marjorie Young.

RIP the suave, hard working, much loved Sir Roger Moore, who died on 23 May 2017, aged 89.

RIP Hardy Kruger [Franz Eberhard August Krüger] (12 April 1928 – 19 January 2022), who appeared in more than 60 films after 1944 and became an international favourite.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5489

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