"You are looking at the face of a Villain. By the time he's ready to kill you, it's an act of mercy," reads the poster for this odd 1971 Richard Burton film. Car crashes, fistfights, cockney criminal - not your typical Burton. In the film, he plays Vic Dakin, a gay, overly-violent East End British gangster, seemingly based on Ronnie Kray, the famous crime figure. Also in the cast is a young Ian McShane, as Dakin's lover, Nigel Davenport as a Scotland Yard inspector, Colin Welland, Donald Sinden, Frank Fletcher, Cathleen Nesbitt as Dakin's ill mother, and Joss Ackland, who reportedly burst into producer Alan Ladd, Jr.'s office in character as an East End gangster and intimidated him, saying "If you don't give me this bleedin' part, I'll break your bloody neck." He got the part.

Shot on location at various places in London, including Arundel Gardens in Notting Hill, the Assembly House pub in Kentish Town (site of a publicity still of Burton's then-wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor, visiting Burton on the set and pulling beers behind the bar), both Heathrow and Gatwick airports, York Mansions in Battersea, and the Nine Elms section, Villain was based on James Barlow's 1968 crime novel Burden of Proof. Adapted for the screen by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, Villain was directed by Michael Tuchner for producer Alan Ladd, Jr.'s Kastner-Ladd-Kanter production company, in association with Anglo-EMI.

The plot follows Vic Dakin as he gets involved in a payroll heist at a plastics factory, but is later betrayed to the police by the man who tipped him off to the delivery. The suspense comes as Dakin plans the robbery, while the police plan to trap him. Villain came at a bad time for Burton, who was seeing his popularity decline in 1970, when the film went into production. For nearly a decade, he and Elizabeth Taylor had dominated the headlines with their partying, spending, fighting, and make-ups, but the public began to be weary of their antics and the carousing life-style was taking a toll on Burton's face. At 45, he looked older than his years, bloated and exhausted. Nevertheless, he celebrated his birthday during production on November 10, 1970 with a day off to go to Buckingham Palace with Taylor and his sister, Cicely, to accept a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) from Queen Elizabeth.

Released at the Trans-Lux East and West Theaters in New York on May 26, 1971 (with a UK release on August 12th), Villain certainly under-performed at the box office, and damaged Burton's ability to guarantee film financing. Film critic Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, described Burton as "grown somewhat fat and soft, like a potato that's been left too long on the vine, reads his lines well while keeping himself at a safe remove from them, as if he didn't want to be identified with the part." Director Michael Tuchner is panned as having "learned his craft by studying the films of Henri Verneuil, the French director who seems to have learned his craft by imitating (badly) good American gangster films of the thirties. [...] It's an awful film, really."

By Lorraine LoBianco


SOURCES:
BFI Screen Online
Canby, Vincent "Burton Portrays 'The Villain' of the London Underworld," The New York Times 27 May 71
The Internet Movie Database
http://www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/villain.html
Trailer "The Villain" retrieved https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xsL4zBmbl0