Sunday in the Country (aka Vengeance Is Mine) 1974

[ZeTi]

Coming from Screenbound next month.



Trailer:

Sunday in the Country 1974 Trailer - YouTube

[Gerby]

Day one for me, one of my favourite 70's exploitation films.

[Dickieduvet]

My copy from Zavvi arrived early, just took a quick peek at it and it looks better than I was expecting, pretty solid.

Only extra is a bunch of HD trailers for

Hannie Caulder
55 Days At Peking
Wise Blood
The Man Called Noon

So a few future releases there except Wise Blood (already out )

[ZeTi]

Read somewhere it even has the german dub on the disc ... is that true ?

[The Great Owl]

After killing two tellers in a bank robbery and then brutally murdering a young couple in order to steal a car, three vicious criminals are on the run across the rural American Midwest. When they discover that the police have blocked off all of the county roads, these three men ditch the stolen vehicle in the woods and then take off cross country on foot, eventually arriving at the isolated home of Adam Smith, a farmer played by the late great Ernest Borgnine (The Wild Bunch, Airwolf), and his granddaughter, both of whom are settling down for dinner after returning from church.

Adam is an upstanding, but no-nonsense old-fashioned sort of who values the virtues of hard work, scoffs at lazy modern trends, and does not depend on others to take care of his own, while his granddaughter, played by Hollis McLaren (Atlantic City), has just returned from college for the summer and seems to have a more casual hippie approach to life. When their Sunday afternoon is interrupted by the arrival of the three murderous crooks at their door, Adam kills one of them with a shotgun, and, instead of contacting the police, chains the other two in his basement to torture them. The shocked and horrified granddaughter wants to turn these men over to the authorities before all hell breaks loose, but even she cannot sway Adam from taking the law into his own calmly diabolical hands.

The 1974 drive-in movie, Sunday in the Country, which was produced and filmed in Canada, kicks off like a run-of-the-mill home invasion thriller, but soon veers down an interesting side road to deliver meditations on both the nature of brutality and the nature of hypocrisy. Borgnine, who was only in his late 50s at the time of filming, was one of those men who probably looked like a benevolent elderly grandfather type right from birth, and he is so resplendent in his down-home salt-of-the-Earth country everyman role here that it's difficult not to pull for him, even when the darker aspects of his personality manifest themselves. The three well-dressed bank robbers, however, are clearly villainous across the board, especially the extremely feral younger one, played magnificently by the underrated character actor, Michael J. Pollard.

My one minor grievance with Sunday in the Country is that I'm not quite sure what point the filmmakers were trying to make, since the movie constantly straddles the line between scenes that accentuate the menace of Borgnine's Adam and scenes that justify his hostility. After the final camera shot, I just sort of shrugged and thought to myself, “Okay...that's that.” Ultimately, though, I like the way that this film never ceases to be engaging and entertaining, and I like its exploration of the notion that it's not easy to fight the good fight against monsters without becoming monsters ourselves. If you're looking for decently gritty 1970s exploitation fare, then you're in the right place.

This Screenbound Blu-ray is a strictly bare bones affair, with nary an alternate audio option or even subtitles, but the movie itself looks nicely filmic in high definition.

[saqibhasan101]

I much prefer your take on the movie that the official review published on the site, which seems to justify the killings in Florida based on “stand your ground” laws.

[jacobvongunten]

Yeah, you have to filter out the alt-right claptrap frequently when reading Dr. Svet's reviews. He's no better on the technical side of things too, as shown by his recent review of the BFI La Belle et la Bete, where he makes no mention of the serious encoding problems with that disc. If fact, his PQ comments often seem like a cut/paste job.

[apmje]

Dr. Svet is clearly pro-capitalist, pro-America and he doesn't hide it in his reviews. Something I've found very annoying.

[saqibhasan101]

Is he actually a doctor? Or more like dr dre?

[stepeanut]

Originally Posted by saqibhasan101

Is he actually a doctor? Or more like dr dre?

https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/revie...viewerid=10022

[saqibhasan101]

I wonder where the disclaimer is about “my views are my own and not the websites”?

[The Apocalypse]

Originally Posted by saqibhasan101

I wonder where the disclaimer is about “my views are my own and not the websites”?

That disclaimer isn't necessary. At the end of the day, a review is simply that - whether or not you agree, or even wholeheartedly dislike it. Yes it may be a guiding factor but ultimately the choice to purchase is in the hands of the beholder.

[Cremildo]

Originally Posted by apmje

Dr. Svet is clearly pro-capitalist, pro-America and he doesn't hide it in his reviews. Something I've found very annoying.

I'd be annoyed if he were pro-Communist and anti-American.

[johnpaul2]

Originally Posted by saqibhasan101

I much prefer your take on the movie that the official review published on the site, which seems to justify the killings in Florida based on “stand your ground” laws.

What's interesting is that things in the movie actually are not at all "as black and white as they initially appear". The movie clearly questions Adam's righteousness, especially his treatment of Lucy who ends up being as much his protégée than his victim (who ends up locked up in her room just like criminals are locked up in the basement). Also, by setting no prior ground for Borgnine's behavior since he acts before anything direct happens, and by not describing his past, the movie clearly aims at underlining about how his violence is based on nothing concrete. Or maybe, actually, he's not righteous at all, which might explain why all the women in his life disappeared ? So in the end, is it better or worse than the criminals he wants to make an exemple of ?

Taking this into account, the reviewer's take on the movie probably says more about the reviewer himself than the movie.

"In a real situation like the one that is chronicled in this film, at the end, the only thing that matters is how many lives were saved and how many were lost."

But, actually, how many lives Adam really saved and how many Adam concretely took ?


But of course, what can we expect of a review of a Canadian/UK movie whose first words are "Here's a prime example of an American film that would not get greenlighted in the current social environment."

Originally Posted by Cremildo

I'd be annoyed if he were pro-Communist and anti-American.

I don't think it should matter. But the issue with Svet's movies' reviews however is that his political stance has been increasingly the sole prism through which he's analysing more and more movies, and aside of shoving this prism onto movies that never warranted it, he often ends up doing misguided analysis because of how he seems to twist the movies to fit his worldview. The issue then isn't about doing political analysis (why not), but about how misguided they can be.


This being written, I'm more bothered by his numerous directly and purely pro-Trump profile posts, because I'm quite certain they would be very quickly deleted by mods if they were regular members' board posts.