User Reviews

I disagree with the commentator who opined that "The Hellions" resembles "Firecreek" in action and themes more closely than it resembles "High Noon". Points of similarity: 1. The Outlaw father is seeking revenge against the local lawman for a past injury. 2. It's a thriving frontier community, not a backwater full of "losers" like the town of Firecreek. 3. The departure-by-train that doesn't happen: Just as the Marshal'wife gets off the train to go back and help him fight, another character in "Hellions" makes a similar decision. But the townspeople in "Hellions" go only so far in leaving everything up to the Constible. When the chips are down, it's a very different ending.

I first saw this movie about 1962, and again on TV in the late 80's. (Beware of the edited-for-TV print.--Ugh! But I still remember scraps of the lilting theme song: Here they come and may they soon be gone/ Matthew, Jubal, Mark and Luke and John/ ...Live by the gun and sure as the sunrise/ Die by the gun you must,/ Just as the Hellions one by one/ Died in the Trans Vaal dust! (Chorus: They died in the Trans Vaal dust!)

THE HELLIONS is an enjoyable British western, shot in South Africa with an authentic foreign feel. Richard Todd plays the usual kind of character, the police sergeant of a small town invaded by a gang of reprobates led by the swaggering Luke Billings, played to the hilt by a cast-against-style Lionel Jeffries. After a great deal of simmering tension and a bit of violence here and there, things build to a head as the townsfolk must decide whether to fight back or not. An ensemble cast of familiar and surprising faces (Ronald Fraser, Marty Wilde, James Booth, Colin Blakely) work hard with the material, lifting it from its pulpish origins, and the bad guys are particularly well drawn, having a lot more fun than the heroes. Things build to a lavish action climax that proves extremely satisfying.

This British rip off of "High Noon", set in South Africa, stars Richard Todd as a lawman who once ran the rotten Lionel Jeffries and his brothers out of town and now they are all back to seek revenge, basically taking over the town and bullying everyone there because it is a weapon free town and nobody has anything to stop them from doing it. Jeffries, best known for his eccentric characters (probably Dick Van Dyke's father in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang") is a despicable villain here, and attempts to rape Anne Aubrey while the drunk and obviously insane brothers (James Booth among them) turn the local saloon upside down with their menacing ways.

The only real difference between this and "High Noon" is the cheap color photography and the absence of the theme song, in addition to other memorable types from that famous Gary Cooper western. The script itself isn't bad but the fact of his such a blatant copy of the more famous classic makes it all the more difficult to rank as a good film. Also the fact that it is very unpleasant and extremely violent and that's in the Wilds of South Africa, not even one person had a weapon to blow these people off the face of the Earth. There is an arsenal of hidden weapons somewhere in the area, and it will take a lot of courage for the cowardly people to finally stand up and say enough. Strong stuff if you're able to stomach it, but pretty forgettable.

A big hit in its day that has fallen into surprising obscurity, the audience deservedly gave the 'The Hellions' a round of applause at the end of tonight's extremely rare archive screening on London's South Bank of this singular British 'western' vividly photographed in Technicolor and Technirama by South African-born cameraman Ted Moore (soon to spend over ten years shooting most of the original James Bond films), evoking the brilliant sunshine of 1870s South Africa.

The title song is one long spoiler describing the fate of the eponymous Hellions, who die "one by one...in the Transvaal sun"; so the suspense derives from trying to figure out just how this wild bunch are to get their comeuppance, and who they're going to take with them in the process. When the crunch finally comes the climax is pretty unbelievable but extremely satisfying.

Although often compared to 'High Noon', the action more closely resembles 'The Desperate Hours'; and for a 1961 audience The Hellions would more uncomfortably have recalled Teddy Boys than hired guns. Visually, this collection of unkempt, gurning delinquents wouldn't have been out of place a few years later in a spaghetti western (Al Mulock, who plays Adam, was actually in 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'); although for all its impressive violence - including some eye watering scenes involving barbed wire - it retains a certain English fastidiousness, well-exemplified by the presence of Richard Todd as its hero. The superb performance by Lionel Jeffries (fresh from his terrifying Marquis of Queensberry in 'The Trials of Oscar Wilde') as the Hellions' patriarch (similar to Uncle Shiloh in John Ford's 'WagonMaster') is ably complemented by a script that even at the tensest moments displays a very dry black humour.