Wild Geese II ** (1985, Scott Glenn, Barbara Carrera, Edward Fox, Laurence Olivier, Robert Webber, Kenneth Haigh, Stratford Johns) – Classic Movie Review 8802

The final curtain on Laurence Olivier’s film career was as Rudolf Hess in director Peter R Hunt’s below-par 1985 action movie Wild Geese II, in which Scott Glenn stars as adventurer John Haddad, who is paid by US television to kidnap the old Nazi war criminal from Spandau Prison in Berlin, along with his gang of mercenaries. Being complex usually helps with a thriller, but unfortunately here Reginald Rose’s screenplay falls into the muddled category.

Wild Geese II has virtually no relation to 1978’s The Wild Geese, with Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger and Stewart Granger, with an unrelated different story (though by the same author and the film has the same screen-writer) and a different cast, also including Barbara Carrera, Edward Fox, Robert Webber, Kenneth Haigh, Stratford Johns, Robert Freitag, Derek Thompson, Paul Antrim, John Terry, Ingrid Pitt and Patrick Stewart. After his 1978 hit, Euan Lloyd produces from another novel (The Square Circle) by the original The Wild Geese writer Daniel Carney.

Lloyd was asked for a film sequel by the public after the success of The Wild Geese, so he asked Daniel Carney to write a sequel novel. Carney refused as he could not think up a story, until Lloyd suggested one, this movie’s Hess kidnapping concept, and the novel was published in 1982.

The film takes place in 1977 and 1982, and does not feature any of the characters from The Wild Geese.

The performances, especially by Glenn, Fox and Olivier, are assets. The filming in Berlin, including at Spandau Prison, is another asset. As such, it was the last movie to use the Spandau location, which was demolished after the last prisoner, Rudolf Hess, died in 1987, to prevent it from becoming a neo-Nazi shrine. They could not film inside Spandau Prison, so the used the similar-looking Tegel Correctional Institution.

[Spoiler alert] The twist in the story is that Colonel Reed-Henry (Kenneth Haigh) is a Soviet agent traitor, ordered to kill the rescue team and hand Hess to the KGB.

The film was supposed to reunite stars Richard Burton and Roger Moore from The Wild Geese (1978) as a proper sequel. Burton was to play his Wild Geese character Allen Faulkner, but died a few days before filming began and Moore pulled out. Edward Fox stepped in to play Allen’s brother Alex Faulkner, with Fox speaking the dialogue written for Burton. Filming had to start without Fox, with scenes featuring the end of a rifle pointing out of a window and only the shooter’s hands visible, with dialogue added in post-production. The film starts with a dedication to Burton and a short summary of The Wild Geese. Fox’s salary was significantly lower than Burton’s, but it still allowed him to add another wing onto his house.

The frail, 77-year-old Olivier had trouble with his dialogue, and struggled for hours on his one long speech because of memory problems. Olivier did go on to act in two TV Mini-Series and played The Old Soldier in Derek Jarman’s War Requiem (1989) before his death on July 11 1989, aged 82.

Patrick Stewart has said that his Russian General role is the only acting job he regretted doing. He said he only took the part to pay for repairs to his bay window at his West London house.

It proved the last production of Euan Lloyd, who died on 2 July 2016, aged 92. He started out as an assistant cinema manager at the ABC Walsall, became a film publicist and then a top independent producer.

Rudolf Hess was a deputy Fuhrer who flew to the UK during the war to try to arrange a peace deal between Nazi Germany and the British Empire. On 10 May 1941 he took off in a Messerschmitt and parachuted over Renfrewshire, Scotland, where farmer David McLain arrested him with his pitchfork. Hess was tried at the Nuremberg trial of the International Military Tribunal in 1946, was found guilty on two counts and he was given a life sentence. He was the most senior Nazi to survive the war, kept imprisoned in Spandau till he died by suicide with an electric cord round his neck in 1987, aged 93. His son said Olivier’s likeness to his father was ‘uncannily accurate’.

Lewis Collins said that he was originally hired to play Haddad.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8802

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