Great actors often begin their careers by playing in cheap or forgettable exploitation pieces before the opportunity to star in grand films. When those careers begin a downward trajectory, exactly the opposite happens and they replace grand films with exploitation garbage way below their stellar reputation. Richard Burton’s career provided plenty of examples for this phenomenon, but few were as clear as The Klansman, the 1974 action drama directed by Terrence Young.
In this film Burton plays Brack Stancill, a wealthy landowner in Atoka County, a backwater part of Alabama where the white population, including mayor Hardy Riddle (played by David Huddleston) likes to pretend that the 1960s civil rights struggle never happened and tries to stick to old racist ways, including widespread membership in the Ku Klux Klan. Stancill, on the other hand, not only rejects racism but actually despises the Klan and makes his feelings clear by giving land, financial and other support to blacks living on his property. His friend, Sheriff Track Bascomb (played by Lee Marvin), is a more practical man and only wants to keep the peace in the county, a task that becomes difficult with the upcoming arrival of civil rights activists and increased racial tension. When a black man rapes Nancy Poteet (played by Linda Evans), this triggers a spiral of violence; local Klansmen predictably retaliate by trying to lynch two young black men. One is caught, castrated and murdered; the other, Garth (played by O. J. Simpson) escapes and decides to avenge his friend by killing local Klansmen one by one.
The Klansman actually began as a serious project dealing with important social issues. It was based on the novel by William Bradford Huie, a journalist whose extensive investigations into the inner workings of the Ku Klux Klan had brought him the “honour” of having a burned cross on his lawn. The script was co-written by Samuel Fuller, a highly respected independent filmmaker specialised in themes related to the dark underbelly of American society. The film was produced by William D. Alexander, the first African American among major producers in modern Hollywood. With director Terrence Young, best known for early Bond films and stars like Marvin and Burton in lead roles, it was supposed to be a great film, but the audience received something quite different.
Things started to go wrong when the producer and the studio changed the original script, making Fuller leave the set in disgust. The basic plot was turned into a misguided combination of “blaxploitation” and “hixploitation”, with both black and white characters being subjected to annoying and degrading ethnic stereotypes. That includes even Garth, played by O. J. Simpson in his screen acting debut, who inexplicably transforms from an ordinary young man into a one-man army able to dispatch hordes of Klansmen with the same ease Rambo took care of Soviets in the 1980s. The script also turns him into some sort of charismatic revolutionary, openly preaching violence as the solution to problems, words that look morbidly prophetic in light of certain real life events Simpson later became infamous for. There are, however, few bright spots, like the scene in which the character of Riddle admits that institutional racism has less to do with actual prejudice and more with the economic interests of the Southern elite. But they are difficult to spot in a film which is stuffed with as much graphic sex and violence, often at the expense of good taste, sensible plot and characterisation.
The worst thing about The Klansman is, however, the acting. While some members of the cast, like Huddleston or Italian actress and former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi as Bascomb’s secretary, do their job decently, the rest of the cast is uninspired, and that includes the incredibly annoying Linda Evans, future star of Dynasty, who makes the audience lose empathy for her character as a rape victim. Lee Marvin, one of the most charismatic actors of his time, sleepwalks through his role, but that is much better than the performance of Richard Burton, whose Southern accent, unlike the impeccably dubbed Paluzzi, goes on and off. Both actors were known as heavy drinkers and both later admitted that they didn’t remember working together on this film, but Burton’s condition was apparently much more severe, forcing many scenes to be shot with him lying or sitting down, because he just couldn’t stand upright. Young, an otherwise capable director, simply gave up under such conditions and did his job in the most perfunctory manner, resulting in many poorly edited, overlong, unexciting scenes. That includes the last confusing scene of a gun battle at night and its downbeat ending which perfectly encapsulates what the audience would feel about this film.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
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