TRIAL BY COMBAT

 

I recently discovered this rare 1975 film on the Fawesome streaming channel, under the title A CHOICE OF WEAPONS. This movie is also known as A DIRTY KNIGHT'S WORK. As you would expect from a production with multiple titles, it deserves its obscurity, but it does have a notable cast. 

The story begins with a group of knights on horseback riding through a mist-shrouded field next to a large estate. A joust is commenced, and one of the participants is killed, though it seems more like an execution. One assumes that this is the Middle Ages, but it isn't. It's the 1970s, and the leader of the knights is Sir Giles Marley (Donald Pleasence). Sir Giles and his men belong to an organization called the Knights of Avalon, and the founder of that group, Sir Edward Gifford (Peter Cushing), discovers that they have been killing several British criminals through "trial by combat". Sir Giles has Sir Edward killed, and Gifford's estranged son John (David Birney) travels from America after he learns of his father's death. John and his father's old friend, a retired Scotland Yard commissioner (John Mills) investigate what happened to Sir Edward, and what the Knights of Avalon are really up to, with help from Sir Giles' secretary (Barbara Hershey). 

TRIAL BY COMBAT (or whatever you wish to call it) has a fairly decent premise, but it fails to deliver due to too many clumsy attempts at comedy and too much time spent on eccentric characters (such as Margaret Leighton as the mother of a London gangster). It's as if the filmmakers themselves couldn't take the subject of their own story seriously. There's not enough background detail given on the Knights of Avalon, and instead of being a viable threat, they come off as a bunch of goofy guys who like to indulge in an extreme form of cosplay. 

Director Kevin Connor made a number of lighthearted adventure films during this period, and he was very efficient with this material. He tries to inject as much energy as he can--the action scenes are well handled, and the best sequence in the film is a chase between a car and armed knights on horseback. There's just too much distracting silliness and not enough characterization to make it work. 

It's hard to believe that David Birney is a son of Peter Cushing (in the movie it is explained that Birney's character has lived in America with his mother most of his life, and he didn't understand his father's obsession with chivalry). Birney's John is set up as an outsider to the knightly goings-on, yet almost immediately after he arrives he takes part in a jousting/battle competition and wins, and he successfully navigates his own "trial by combat" in the climax. 

Despite the fact that he's the main villain, Donald Pleasence doesn't get much to do, other than be surly. He does have a nice "villain tries to justify his actions to the hero" speech toward the end. Peter Cushing has even less to do--he's in the pre-credits sequence and a later flashback, and that's it. John Mills is stuck doing the comic relief role--for some reason his character spends most of his time fooling around with various animals. 

TRIAL BY COMBAT has some notable names behind the camera as well, such as cinematographer Alan Hume and music composer Frank Cordell. The amount of talent involved in this movie was much better than the result of the final product (there's plenty of British productions made in the 1960s and 70s that one could make the same judgement on). 

A number of critics have stated that TRIAL BY COMBAT felt like an episode of the cult TV series THE AVENGERS. It's a good point--the story would have worked much better in a hour-long format on the small screen instead of a full-length theatrical feature. Peter Cushing and Donald Pleasence fans will want to see it to mark it off their checklists. 

With the cast & crew it has, I'm surprised that TRIAL BY COMBAT hasn't gotten a recent Blu-ray release from a company like Kino. The version I watched on Fawesome looked as if it had been sourced from an old VHS tape.