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Films: G is for...

Golden Rendezvous

A couple of foreign productions helped the ailing Rank Film Productions expand their range in the ’70s, and hedge their bets with various territories at the same time. This South African thriller is pretty close to home though, being a standard Alistair MacLean romp about a gang of terrorists led by John ‘stuffy old Dean Worner off of Animal House’ Vernon using a nuclear bomb in a coffin to hold Richard Harris’ tramp steamer hostage. They were originally led by Christopher Lee, until a barely-coherent Harris fired him in a spate of sauce-fuelled narkiness. The rest of the thing proceeds much as you’d expect, with smuggled enemy agents, some derring-do by an injured Harris, and the inevitable ‘blimey, that bomb countdown’s taking its time’ cliffhanger climax, augmented by such dependable action stalwarts as Burgess Meredith, Gordon Jackson and Emmerdale Farm’s Eric Pollard.

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  1. Richard16378

    December 28, 2013 at 2:05 pm

    Dumbledore, Mr Hudson & The Penguin together at last!

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