William Tell

This was fairly so so. I'd read that the violence was extreme but I wouldn't call it that especially by today's standards, or indeed by the standard of Sam Peckinpah, some fifty odd years ago. The story is fairly dumb. The baddies don't like their rapist murdering employee getting bumped off so they seek revenge. They're not seeking too keenly but when they can't ignore that they've found their quarry, instead of finishing him off, they do that stupid apple/crossbow thing.

The oddest thing here is the dialogue. It seems, some of the time, as if it's in plain verse. It also seems as if it could have been badly translated from some other language. I thought I heard one of the characters making a quote from Shakespeare (who I think postdates this). Anyway it seems to me that it often appears as if the acting is a bit substandard whereas I suspect that the problem was that the players found it difficult to deliver these really extraordinarily clunky lines. Anyway, it looks, from the closing scenes, as if The Return of William Tell, is more than pencilled in. Since, in the whole history of cinema, there's only been about two sequels that at least matched the originals, I think I'll be giving it a miss.