Villain

An underworld saga scripted by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, who look as though they were disgorging a semi-masticated lesson culled from Nic Roeg, Donald Cammell and Performance. A ludicrous exposé of the lower depths of London crime, it tarts up the hoariest old gangster clichés with a bit of homosexuality and a lot of thuggery, and manages to be both brutish and maudlin. Burton gives a performance of ripe grotesquerie as the gay gang boss who is the spirit of devotion to his mother and a leering Marquis de Sade to his victims.