A big hit in its day that has fallen into surprising obscurity, the audience deservedly gave the 'The Hellions' a round of applause at the end of tonight's extremely rare archive screening on London's South Bank of this singular British 'western' vividly photographed in Technicolor and Technirama by South African-born cameraman Ted Moore (soon to spend over ten years shooting most of the original James Bond films), evoking the brilliant sunshine of 1870s South Africa.
The title song is one long spoiler describing the fate of the eponymous Hellions, who die "one by one...in the Transvaal sun"; so the suspense derives from trying to figure out just how this wild bunch are to get their comeuppance, and who they're going to take with them in the process. When the crunch finally comes the climax is pretty unbelievable but extremely satisfying.
Although often compared to 'High Noon', the action more closely resembles 'The Desperate Hours'; and for a 1961 audience The Hellions would more uncomfortably have recalled Teddy Boys than hired guns. Visually, this collection of unkempt, gurning delinquents wouldn't have been out of place a few years later in a spaghetti western (Al Mulock, who plays Adam, was actually in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'); although for all its impressive violence - including some eye watering scenes involving barbed wire - it retains a certain English fastidiousness, well-exemplified by the presence of Richard Todd as its hero. The superb performance by Lionel Jeffries (fresh from his terrifying Marquis of Queensberry in 'The Trials of Oscar Wilde') as the Hellions' patriarch (similar to Uncle Shiloh in John Ford's 'WagonMaster') is ably complemented by a script that even at the tensest moments displays a very dry black humour.
The title song is one long spoiler describing the fate of the eponymous Hellions, who die "one by one...in the Transvaal sun"; so the suspense derives from trying to figure out just how this wild bunch are to get their comeuppance, and who they're going to take with them in the process. When the crunch finally comes the climax is pretty unbelievable but extremely satisfying.
Although often compared to 'High Noon', the action more closely resembles 'The Desperate Hours'; and for a 1961 audience The Hellions would more uncomfortably have recalled Teddy Boys than hired guns. Visually, this collection of unkempt, gurning delinquents wouldn't have been out of place a few years later in a spaghetti western (Al Mulock, who plays Adam, was actually in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'); although for all its impressive violence - including some eye watering scenes involving barbed wire - it retains a certain English fastidiousness, well-exemplified by the presence of Richard Todd as its hero. The superb performance by Lionel Jeffries (fresh from his terrifying Marquis of Queensberry in 'The Trials of Oscar Wilde') as the Hellions' patriarch (similar to Uncle Shiloh in John Ford's 'WagonMaster') is ably complemented by a script that even at the tensest moments displays a very dry black humour.