The Buttercup Chain * (1970, Hywel Bennett, Leigh Taylor-Young, Jane Asher, Sven-Bertil Taube, Clive Revill, Roy Dotrice, Michael Elphick) – Classic Movie Review 10,414

Director Robert Ellis Miller’s 1970 romantic drama The Buttercup Chain is a daft, dated tale of kissing cousins and a love chain foursome – unstable France (Hywel Bennett), his depressive close cousin Margaret (Jane Asher), nice Scandinavian architectural student Fred (Sven-Bertil Taube), and promiscuous young American hippy Manny (Leigh Taylor-Young).

The film-making is certainly slick and polished. As shot in Eastmancolor by Douglas Slocombe, it looks as eye-catching as an early 70s TV commercial filmed on Euro-locations.

The vaguely intriguing story, scripted by Peter Draper from the novel by Janice Elliott, seems more wilfully bizarre than thoughtfully intelligent, with its summer of love tale of incest from the Swinging Sixties.

It was considered a major prestige counter-culture movie for Columbia British Productions. Maybe with a different cast and a different script it could have been a contender… But then again, maybe not.

Also in the cast are Clive Revill, Roy Dotrice, Michael Elphick, Jonathan Burn and Yutte Stensgaard.

Columbia picked Michael Reeves, after his success with Witchfinder General (1968), as director but he died suddenly at age 25 of an accidental overdose.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,414

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