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Films: W is for...

Who Dares Wins

‘All because the hostages love…’ This old SAS chestnut would be far better, we feel, if reimagined by Tony ‘Who Dares Wins’ Robinson, in Fat Tulip storytelling mode, leaping around an Iranian Embassy as he relates the intrepid adventures of a tortoise called Lewis Collins. As it is, we can only hope for Richard ‘Madigan’ Widmark, Edward Woodward, John ‘Triffids’ Duttine, Kenneth Griffith as Monsignor Bruce Kent (ish), Ingrid Pitt, Patrick Allen, Tony ‘MacLaren’ Osoba, and a news desk cameo from Anna Ford to keep us sane.

13 Comments

13 Comments

  1. Lee James Turnock

    September 14, 2011 at 4:25 pm

    “I thought it was a load of anti-American crap”. One eye on the US market, then?

  2. THX 1139

    June 18, 2018 at 12:00 am

    Lewis soooo wanted to be Roger Moore in this. And as we all know, what the CND actually desired was to set off a nuclear warhead – think about it, it makes perfect sense according to this. If you’re Ronald Reagan (who thought WDW was fab).

  3. Glenn Aylett

    May 2, 2020 at 10:01 am

    It was like Bodie rejoins the SAS and Lewis Collins playing Captain Skellern similar to how he played his other famous role from the time, an uncompromising tough guy with a dark sense of humour who charms the women, in this case a female terrorist. It had Ingrid Pitt in a small role as a German terrorist, so was another reason to watch.

  4. THX 1139

    May 2, 2020 at 2:15 pm

    Stewart Lee’s most hated film. He takes it apart tremendously in an article you can find online.

  5. richardpd

    May 2, 2020 at 3:48 pm

    Another film here I’ve never seen but turns up on TV a bit more often as many others here.

    • Glenn Aylett

      May 3, 2020 at 4:57 pm

      Used to be on ITV a lot after News At Ten. Obviously dated now with references to CND, the Cold War and skinheads starting a fight, but watchable because Lewis Collins is playing a bigger role, but still managing to act like Bodie in The Professionals, and Ingrid Pitt, John Duttine and Edward Woodward have decent roles.

      • Andrew Barton

        May 25, 2022 at 10:38 pm

        And Judy Davis emerged unscathed from it too, as did others.

        That American accent she used as Frankie Leith came in handy (she’s Australian actually – from Perth) when her husband Colin Friels was cast as the villain in Darkman with Liam Neeson.

        (Larry Drake played a villain in Darkman to add, a far cry from my young days watching him as Benny on LA Law.)

  6. Sidney Balmoral James

    January 26, 2021 at 8:48 am

    Chiefly memorable for the fact that Lewis’ character is called Peter Skellen, as clearly his head crunching bad-ass SAS man has a lot in common with beige, ‘You’re A Lady’ singer Peter Skellern. Presumably a complete coincidence, but a bit distracting. Although not as much as if Bruce Willis’ character in Die Hard had been called Richard Stillgo.

  7. Tom Ronson

    May 23, 2022 at 12:15 am

    The part that always gets me is the utterly bizarre anti-nuclear performance art that takes place in a room above a pub, which looks like something Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Trevor Nunn might have cooked up if they’d dropped acid and watched Gerald Scarfe’s animated bits from Pink Floyd – The Wall. Oh, and the CND benefit gig (staged in a church, because fuck society) featuring a sort of supergroup of redoubtable British prog and folk rock legends… just what ‘the kids’ were into circa 1982.

    • Droogie

      May 25, 2022 at 11:39 pm

      My main memory of seeing this silly film as a kid is the CND benefit and a bunch of skinheads moshing frantically to what look like a Fairport Convention tribute band called Metalmorphosis (!)

  8. Glenn Aylett

    May 26, 2022 at 8:35 pm

    @ Droogie, you knew something was going to happen when the skinheads started up their well known chant of Sieg Heil and wanted the band back on, even if it was the kind of music skinheads would run a mile from, or beat up the poncey hippy( sic) performers.

  9. Droogie

    May 27, 2022 at 3:09 pm

    @ Glenn Aylett. Indeed. Nazi skinheads and folk music don’t really go together. ( though there were that bizarre group called Prussian Blue that Louis Theroux did a documentary on. 2 young twin sisters as a duo playing folk songs about white supremacy. I think since they’ve since renounced their racist past and blame their neo-Nazi mother for grooming into all of that. )

  10. Glenn Aylett

    May 28, 2022 at 1:59 pm

    @ Droogie, in 1982, the skins would probably be at a Skrewdriver gig, where they could listen to someone saying how great Hitler was and singing about white supremacy. I doubt a CND benefit gig was the skinheads idea of fun, unless they went along to give some hippies and pacifists a kicking, which occurred in Who Dares Wins and I think they were paid by the French communist who is also funding the terrorist group.

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