Man of Violence

Pete Walker’s affectionate low-budget homage to the gangster thriller is packed with sights and sounds from a Britain about to swing out of the Sixties into a somewhat less optimistic decade.

“If Man of Violence had been made in the US, it could’ve been a blaxploitation flick. If it’d been made in Japan, Seijun Suzuki might have directed with the plot tweaked to involve Yakuza gangsters. As it happened, Pete Walker’s low-budget crime movie was made in England...”
Clydefro Jones, The Digital Fix, 2009

Having begun his career making ultra-low budget sexploitation films, Pete Walker became best known for his so-called ‘terror films’, such as House of Whipcord, Frightmare (both 1974), in which ordinary people find themselves at the mercy of psychopathic authority figures. 

With Man of Violence (1969), Walker delivered something different again. It's a knowing thriller that follows the fortunes of gun-for-hire Moon, as he works for rival underworld bosses, in an adventure that takes in exotic locations, stereotypical villains and Hammer horror girls Luan Peters and Virginia Wetherell. 

Man of Violence offers a great deal to enjoy and to be surprised by, not least in the sequence where Moon attempts to get information from a gay man by spending the night with him.

Other men of violence in British cinema include Michael Caine in Get Carter (1971), Richard Burton in Villain (1971) and Bob Hoskins in The Long Good Friday (1979).