Trial by Combat (1976)

Despite the ongoing decline of the British film industry during the seventies, with many of the smaller production companies falling by the wayside, British studios increasingly found themselves occupied by runaway US productions in search of tax breaks.  Nevertheless, various low-budget, independently produced, films continued to appear, often boasting impressive-looking casts, as actors formerly well employed appearing in UK productions found themselves otherwise unemployed.  Trial by Combat (1976) is one such example.  Produced by experienced independent US producers Paul Heller and Fred Weintraub and shot entirely on location, the movie is clearly designed to play upon the sort of quirky Britishness lapped up US TV viewers in the form of series like The Saint and The Avengers.  Indeed, its script plays out like an unused script for The Avengers, with its eccentric, vintage car driving, older male lead, in the form of John Mills as a retired Metropolitan Police Commissioner, its country mansion settings, colourful but cheery working class criminals and as its villains, a group of upper crust vigilantes who dress up as medieval knights to mete out 'justice'.  Indeed, in terms of production values, Trial by Combat comes over like a misplaced TV episode, or even an unsold TV pilot, with the small screen feel reinforced by a supporting cast of familiar British TV faces, including Brian Glover, John Savident and a first screen appearance for Bernard Hill.  

Directed by Kevin Connor, following up his success with The Land That Time Forgot (1974), the film even seems to be trying to emulate the feel of the late sixties Avengers episodes, mixing a flippant, jokey approach with elaborately staged and frenetic action sequences.  But whereas the TV series had achieved an agreeable form of surrealism, perfectly in tune with the zeitgeist of the era in which it was made, Trial by Combat, with its broad characterisations and leaden dialogue, comes over more like the sort of strip you'd find in the average British comic of the time.  (Not in itself a bad thing, but surely not what the film's makers were aiming for, the cast alone suggesting that they were aiming for something more 'sophisticated').  While the two imported token American leads - David Birney and Barbara Hershey - make next to no impression at all, the film is carried by the impressive supporting cast, including Mills and Donald Pleasance as the main villain.  There's also a welcome, but too brief, extended cameo from Peter Cushing.  Most memorable though are Mills' cheerful gangster ally Brian Glover and his mother, played in her last role by Margaret Leighton (she died before the film's premiere).  Glover injects a welcome burst of energy into the film's second half, pulling out all the stops and giving the sort of performance a film of this nature needs.  In fact, he is probably the movie's saving grace, as any film which features Brian Glover single-handedly taking on (and besting) a group of knights in armour, mounted on horses, is surely worth watching.  Originally released in the UK on a double bill with The Swiss Conspiracy (1975), a thriller with similarly modest ambitions, Trial by Combat isn't exactly a bad film, but rather an undemanding, lightweight, production of the sort that, by the mid-seventies, really didn't have much of an audience as far cinemas were concerned - it was simply no better than what audiences could see for free on TV in the comfort of their own living rooms.