jgepperson

This isn't a great movie, and not even really a good movie, but it is...well, something. It seems to be the wacky, 1960s, Greek bastard/child of "Dr. Strangelove" and "The Russians Are Coming". It popped up recently on the Fox Movie Channel. Tom Courtenay was playing very serious in "Doctor Zhivago" a couple of years earlier. Here he is trying for laughs and mostly in his underwear. In fact there are lots of pretty people wearing very little, and when they are wearing something it's often designed by the director/writer/producer himself, and it's beyond the valley of mod. In fact, the movie could use more mod and more Grecian scenery. Recommended if you like movies from the late 60s.

This movie is nirvana for trashy B-movie lovers. The cast is incredible. I believe Ida Lupino played a similar role in a 70s TV movie called "Women In Chains." In this one, "Women's Prison," one of the female inmates (there are male inmates, too) is a movie star impersonator, a trait that hilariously figures into the plot. Some of the actresses in this film also appeared in the earlier and much better "Caged": Gertrude Michael, Jan Sterling. There was another women's prison movie called "House of Women" soon to come. Don't miss this absurd movie! They showed it on Turner Classic Movies recently as part of their gay series. It will probably show up again.

I've just finished re-watching this movie and Schlesinger's "Midnight Cowboy, "Marathon Man" and "Day of the Locust." Also I've been reading bits of Schlesinger's biography "Edge of Midnight." Some of his interests included homosexuality, Jewishness, and the ugliness of modern society, as well as attempts by humans to connect with one another. Although "Midnight Cowboy" may be his masterpiece, this movie "Sunday Bloody Sunday" manages to convey all those things and more. All four of the movies are worth seeing. "Marathon Man" was a hit and "Locust" was not, but I prefer the latter.

"Sunday Bloody Sunday" is the most restrained of the four. Its being set in England could account for that. Schlesinger was pretty much appalled (but fascinated) by America.

I've looked and looked for Daniel Day Lewis in this movie. He's not in the credits of the movie, but he's listed on this site as a "vandal." I finally realized he's one of the little boys seen briefly doing something to a car. (I won't give it away.) There is an adult vandal in the movie; don't confuse the two.

The acting in Schlesinger's movies is always excellent. Treat yourself. One could say that Vivian Pickles peaked in 1971, with this movie and "Harold and Maude." She was also in "Elizabeth R" with Glenda Jackson around the same time, and before this movie she played Isadora Duncan for Ken Russell. One doesn't hear about her in the States anymore.

Bessie Love who plays the answering service operator was a silent movie star, and also played Isadora Duncan's mother in the Vanessa Redgrave movie about Duncan. And speaking of Vanessa, I also recently saw for the first time Schlesinger's "Yanks" with her. It was okay.