Too much of everything

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

Released in 1974 and directed by Terence Young, "The Klansman" is a melodrama with thrills starring Lee Marvin as a sheriff in a small town in northern Alabama trying to keep the lid on racial tensions after a black man rapes a white woman (Linda Evans). Richard Burton co-stars as Breck, an alcoholic who sympathizes with the black community while opposing the local Klan, which is made up of whites in prominent positions, like the unprofessional deputy (Cameron Mitchell) and the rotund mayor (David Huddleston). Lola Falana plays Breck's black spiritual daughter while OJ Simpson (in his first role) plays a vengeful man turning to radical measures to fight the racism. Italian beauty Luciana Paluzzi (from 1965's "Thunderball") is on hand as the Sheriff's assistant at the station, although her lines are dubbed by Joanna Moore.With such a noteworthy cast and a tried-and-true director (who impressively shot the first three Bond films) "The Klansman" should be superlative, but it's not. The plot is great (based on William Bradford Huie's novel), but the screenplay is horribly melodramatic, sometimes to the point of being laughable, like the dreadful (and thoroughly unbelievable) church sequence. The movie comes across as a late-night TV soap opera with edge. I'm assuming that most of the $5 million budget went toward cast & crew wages because the script needed a LOT of kinks worked out, which isn't helped by amateur editing that's often abrupt and awkward. Take, for instance, the fight at the bus station; it has to be seen to be believed. "The Klansman" is an obvious exploitation piece, as these type of films were the ones getting revenue during this low point in Hollywood after bloated-budget films sank a lot of the major studios.Lee Marvin is solid as the protagonist, easily carrying the movie, and Burton still has his charisma, but both were plagued by personal troubles at the time and allegedly drinking heavily. Richard was constantly fighting with Elizabeth Taylor during the shooting, reportedly over Burton's flirtations or affair with a young waitress or an older married woman. There were shouting matches and items flew through the air at their rented house, leading to the destruction of the interior. The crew stayed in a local motel where one full room was filled with cases of alcohol from floor to ceiling. While Marvin and Burton were professionals and always showed up on time the latter clearly slurred lines at times and had to be filmed in a reclining or sitting position to pull off his scenes. Burton was 48 during filming but easily looked a dozen years older.Despite all these negatives, "The Klansman" IS entertaining as a what-were-they-thinking period piece. Speaking of which, look for Evans' camel toe sequence at the bus station (I don't mean to be crude, but – like I said – what were they thinking). If you choose to watch this movie, whatever you do, DON'T expect "Mississippi Burning." The film runs 112 minutes (104 minutes cut) and was shot in Oroville, California, 75 miles north of Sacramento.GRADE: Borderline C-/D+ (3.5/10 Stars)

I remember watching ITV in 1981 and this film being trailed quite heavily to kickstart the station's Autumn season . In those days we only had three television stations and while THE KLANSMAN isn't blockbuster material on a par with GONE WITH THE WIND it did look quite exciting with Lee Marvin getting in to a battle with some nasty looking dudes wearing white bed sheets . For some unexplained reason it got pulled from the schedule just before broadcast never to be heard of again . Jumping forward to the internet era this film has something of a reputation of being rabidly racist and ill thought out and whatever message it is trying to send out is drowned in a explotitive sea of racist insults and violence . Not being put off by this I decided to seek it out to see if its notorious reputation is deserved . To be fair 1981 was another country where LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR was a fondly remembered situation comedy and we do live in more sensitive times . After seeing THE KLANSMAN I was slightly shocked as to why ITV bought the film or indeed how someone could make as recently as 1974 . This tells you how bad it is when viewed today in 2013 I'll defend it on the grounds it's not even intelligent enough to be classed as offensive because it's inept on every level of film making and is sometimes so bad I laughed out loud and gasped " WTF was that about " A white woman is raped and this raises racial tensions in a small Alabama town , the sort of small Alabama town that doesn't need any inciting incidents to cause racial tensions . Take this sensitive speech by the town mayor who looks like Jerry Falwell :" I'll tell ya we're not gonna have any trouble from outside agitators , not while I'm mayor . I spoke to the grand dragon in Birmingham and he say's the Klan is gonna do nothing so we ain't gonna be bombing no churches [ Loud disappointed moans ]I'm the damn exalted Cyclops and what I mean is this none of us want a bunch of agitators , whores , punks , scum , atheists , perverts all controlled by the communists coming in here bothering our n--ggers " so I guess an excess of racism is also tied in with an excess of solecism .By the way have I mentioned this town Mayor is relatively liberal and secular compared to most of the citizens of the county ? When the rape victim goes in to church she finds herself becoming part of the sermon as in " Get out , how can you push yourself on to good Christian folk when you have been in that n--ggers foul embraces ? " Remember this is a rape victim we're talking about whose husband has left her because of " working in the market cutting up pork chops in front of a lady who is dying to ask me what's it like having a wife who's been with a n--gger " . You do get the impression this might be a film along the lines of THE ETERNAL JEW on rednecks is directed by Malcolm X but don't worry because the main black character is played by OJ Simpson and he's as every bit as racist as the klansmen One can perhaps understand ITV bought the film on the strength that it starred Lee Marvin and Richard Burton and thought " Oh two big names must be good " only to find out the film's content . Regardless of the content this wouldn't be a good enough reason to buy it . Marvin is merely okay but Burton ? Oh dear his performance is an all time low . It's said that he spends so many scenes either sitting down or lying down because he'd drank so much his legs had stopped working . It's not difficult to believe this as he mumbles , slurs his words and his accent moves from a Welsh brogue to an idiosyncratic accent all of its own . When Marvin and Burton characters discuss having a drink you can't help thinking there's a meta-fictional scene happening I don't think I've ever seen a film like this before and I'm pretty firm that I won't be seeing anything like it again . It's incompetent on so many levels and yet it's one of those very , very few films that that almost lives up to the cliché as being so bad it's good . I say almost because there's nothing actually good about it but did manage to make me laugh while my jaw was on the ground and while it probably deserves 1/10 it is far funnier than BLAZING SADDLES even though that film was meant to be a comedy unlike this one

I've witnessed movies about the American South that were awful and embarrassing, but this one goes overboard. Nothing or nobody in it is worth the one hour and 41 minutes of time it takes to suffer through this banal piece of junk. First off, here's poor Richard Burton limping about and trying to sound southern, but seems to have given this disguise up half-way through. Then Lee Marvin grunts and growls his one-dimensional sheriff's part with little conviction, so as to make O.J. Simpson's acting seem Olivier-like by comparison. That's right, Simpson's in it and playing the hero, no less. Rumor has it that Burton and Marvin were drunk during most of the filming. Shoot...they both had to be drunk when they first were handed the script.Seems the Burton character has drawn the wrath of the KKK by allowing poor blacks to live on his land rent-free, while taking in rape victims whose attackers were of the opposite race. They want him to leave town and, of course, he won't. So they come to burn him out. What needed burning is this stinker that sends the cause of good race relations back a century or two. I give "The Klansman" * 1/2 stars, with much credited to Johnny Walker.

There is a lot of opinion out there that The Klansman belongs on the list of fifty worst films of all time. It's pretty bad, but I've seen far worse.Putting it in its proper context, The Klansman is set in the years right after the Voting Rights Act has been in force for a while. It's not lost on any of the people of this unnamed Alabama county that there is a black majority out there who if they start voting now, a lot of the power structure will be radically changed. It's the underpinning of the reason the Ku Klux Klan exists. That David Huddleston is also mayor of the town and Grand Exalted Cyclops of the local KKK chapter is a very typical Alabama story for generations.Lee Marvin is the local sheriff and as he conceives his duty it's also to protect the good name of the town and keep the peace. Bringing criminals to justice is second place in his thinking as you'll see by his actions. Richard Burton is a local landowner whose family has long been opposed to the ways of the area, his great grandfather in fact was a judge who was hung for opposing secession before the Civil War. He has a bunch of elderly blacks he keeps on as rent free tenants which has a certain element of the town worked up.Anyway both their efforts come to naught as there is one bloody showdown in the end.The Klansman falls back on a lot of stereotypes, racial and otherwise, in the film. It also has a very muddled message in the end, you'll wind up scratching your head as to what all of it really means.It also in my knowledge has the only rape scene in the history of film that you might wind up laughing at. Cameron Mitchell is Marvin's deputy and a loyal Klansman. At one point under cover of his badge he arrests Lola Falana and takes her to a warehouse where he rapes her with the rest of the white sheet boys standing around gawking. It's staged so stupidly you might actually wind up laughing. That and the fact that who could take Mitchell's character so seriously with a name like Butt Cutt Bates.Life did imitate art however. O.J. Simpson is in this and he's a black avenger after Klansmen capture and kill a friend of his. He goes around executing the hooded swine. But we well know what happened with O.J. in real life.Samuel Fuller pulled out of directing after changes in his script were made and Lee Marvin wanted to pull out, but couldn't because he'd signed a contract. Richard Burton was doing just about anything at this point, he just sort of saunters through the film with a very cheesy southern accent.Pass this one by folks, pass it by.