Watch Shout at the Devil For Free

Overrated

Fantastic!

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

It seems incredible that the same decade which brought Star Wars to the silvery screen disgorged such unutterable tripe as this and many other 'adventure' movies. I am reminded of the similarly lavish, but equally wretched 'Ashanti' outlined elsewhere.Whatever motivated A-list actors to sign-on for such wastes of celluloid is frankly beyond this writer. They must have been very, very desperate. To be perfectly candid, Roger Moore's appearance in any movie is the kiss of death. Although extremely handsome in his youth, his entire acting career has been predicated upon an ability to raise one eyebrow. Every emotion from A to B is conveyed by this simple stratagem. His were the dog-days of James Bond. Lee Marvin on the other hand has featured in some very worthy outings, perhaps most memorably 'Paint Your Wagon' and 'The Dirty Dozen'. He has a comic streak, but he is much better when he plays it straight.The excellent Ian Holm is a throwaway, hardly recognisable blacked-up as a mute African. Everyone else just turned up for their pay-cheques.The only plausible and watchable element is the German cruiser. It looks like a very large model. But it is believably massive and appears authentic - as do its crew. The rest isn't even hokum. The childish comedy jars with the brutality and violence in a story that meanders clumsily about, as if the script itself had had too many whiffs of Lee Marvin's gin. Here is a director who simply doesn't know where he's going. There are hints of 'The African Queen', a snatch from 'The Pride & The Passion', 'Gold', and one or two other rip-offs from movies who's titles don't come readily to mind.Strangely, I have seen it 3 times, each occasion it has been shown on television when I have been laid low with a cold or the flu. Perhaps that is influencing my judgement - but not much.Compare it with any Indiana Jones movie and you will see what I mean.I have given it two stars; one for the battleship and the other because it finally comes to an end, though heaven knows it takes long enough to do that.Time for another Lemsip, I think.

This film had all the ingredients of a good adventure movie, but it revealed incompetence at almost every level.The presence of Roger Moore in the cast list is usually a sign that the movie is not going to be anything more than mediocre, because Moore always has lead roles and he can't act. But this movie also had Ian Holm and Lee Marvin in it, and was based on a Wilbur smith book, so I thought I'd give it a chance when I saw the DVD for sale in the bargain bin...It was a mistake. The opening scene appeared to start in the middle of a reel, with sound suddenly appearing as if the first second of the soundtrack had been truncated. The scene showed a dreadnought at sea with a German crew. This bad editing was a sign of things to come, but the scene with the dreadnought was interesting enough to keep me watching. The special effects were good, and the crew wore the proper uniforms and spoke in German, indicating that the director at least paid attention to historical detail. So I kept watching, and then Moore appeared and my suspicions were confirmed. Bad acting, clichéd lines, clichéd cinematography and cheap humour...but worst of all, there is a disastrous attempt to blend the light-hearted feel of the film with serious drama and tragedy. It just does not work. Much of the time I felt like I was watching a collection of hastily strung together clips, and then the film ended as suddenly and as badly as it started – in the middle of clip.

Shout at the Devil is a harmless yarn, full of clichés, but easy viewing nonetheless. It's best to watch it when you're a little sazzled to ease the dullness, as with a clear mind this would be a tad too boring! Roger Moore plays himself as usual, an unflustered English gent who just happens to turn up in Africa as the Great War gets underway! He gets conned by Lee Marvin who plays a kind of likable old rogue and they end up at war with a ludicrously over the top Hun commander called Fleischer. Fleischer has all those brilliant German clichés, the big tash, the pointy hat and the jackboots. He also rides a tiny pony, making him even more ludicrous! Basically there's a load of chasing and shooting etc, before Roger wins the war in Africa, sort of........Not a terrible film, but hardly a classic!

Read the book. Then see the movie. You'll be surprised. I first saw this movie on television back in the 1980s. I think it was 1981, five years after it was released in theaters, I'm not sure. That was back before cable television became popular and satellite television was NOWHERE on the horizon. This is the story of an American colonel named Flynn Patrick O'Flynn, an English poacher, named Sebastian Oldsmith, O'Flynn's hot daughter, Rosa, caught up in the heat, passion, and intrigue, of World War I. The African Queen it ain't. Oldsmith's a poacher. He hunts elephants illegally and sells the ivory overseas. O'Flynn and his daughter are American expatriates. Both men, and Rosa, live in Zanzibar, (now Tanazania,) and the three of them decide to blow up a German battle cruiser after the Germans, and their allies, the Ashanti, kill their daughter. Do they do it? I'd tell you, but then I'd have to form a firing squad and shoot you.