The Bullet Machine (1970) User Reviews

Lindsay Shonteff, A Cult Director Without A Cult

[jrd_73 · 5/10 · 19 December 2020]

I have wanted to see Clegg ever since I watched the first disk of 42nd Street Forever trailers where the film's trailer was shown under the title The Bullet Machine. Unfortunately, the film proved very hard to find in the U.S. (and maybe the U.K. too). I had to settle for a poorly panned and scanned copy that rendered the action scenes hard to follow.

The film seems to be a (very) low budget mixture of Get Carter and an American hardboiled detective film. Harry Clegg is an ex-cop turned P.I. and on the dishonest side (and on the borderline incompetent side). At the beginning of the movie, Clegg is ambushed in the country by one of his less than satisfied customers who has paid two goons to kill Clegg. After dispensing with the three, Clegg returns to London and gets another job. The well-to-do Lord Cruikshank has received a threatening letter that he wants Clegg to investigate. Cruikshank believes the man responsible is an embezzler who was sentenced to twenty years in prison, but Cruikshank is not too forthcoming with other details. Clegg calls up a lady friend still on the force (Clegg has a lot of lady friends who do his work for him). Clegg learns that the embezzler died in prison twelve years earlier. Meanwhile, a female killer with rifle is eliminating some of Cruikshank's former associates.

The film does not have much of a mystery. Most of the film consists of Clegg (the not exactly dashing Gilbert Wynne) wandering around, sleeping with an unlikely attractive woman, and getting into fights with goons. The film holds the viewer just interested enough to keep him watching but not enough for him to get involved in the plot or the characters. The action scenes are hard to judge out of the correct aspect ratio. I was disappointed that, in spite of the way it is played up in the trailer, Clegg never squares off against the female hitwoman, nor is her character as prominent as she appears from the preview.

Clegg was directed by Lindsay Shonteff, a director that not many people have much love for. I am not quite sure why. I have sat through much worse than Clegg from lesser directors like Al Adamson and Ted V. Mikels, both of whom have a cult following. I rather like Shonteff's The Fast Kill. Clegg is not as good, but it is watchable enough on a boring afternoon. I probably wouldn't watch the film again, even in a better, correctly letterboxed copy.

"trouble is his business, sex is his pleasure, violence is his way of life"

[gavcrimson · 4 July 2007]

Like Robert Hartford-Davis, the late Lindsay Shonteff's career seems to contain equal amounts of great and terrible films, which coupled with the fact that he worked in a variety of genres, tends to make you think of him more as a director for hire or a journeyman, rather than on the same level as DVD box-set worthy figures like Pete Walker or Norm Warren. With Clegg (a.k.a. Harry and the Hookers) though he was definitely having a good day. Shonteff's M.O. for Clegg would appear to be updating the American film noir to a gritty late Sixties London setting. Something the aforementioned Mr. Pete was doing at the same time, but with less success, with films like Man of Violence and Strip Poker.

After a flash forward to the films highlights in the opening credits (a usual Shonteff touch), we meet Harry Clegg (Gilbert Wynne), private eye and "loser since the day I was born" who is about to be executed by a disgruntled swinger client. A flame thrower cunningly disguised as a lighter produced by Clegg during a "one last cigarette" request saves the day, why do bad guys always fall for that trick? don't they watch any movies?. The subsequent plot follows Clegg going from A to B, meeting clients, sleeping around, driving around London (in fact the film must hold some kind of record for 'shot from a car window' images of London) and being beaten up, but generally just being beaten up. "I figured Lips Louie and Charlie the Chin were basically nice people" narrates Clegg as the two goons in question beat him senseless "they'd obviously been influenced by the violence in today's films", a scene given an extra layer of irony by appearing to have been heavily cut by the British censor.

Eventually the plot becomes more err focused as Clegg is drawn into the world of 'Suzy the Slag' a former blue movie actress turned hit woman, who often relies on her past profession to perform 'seduce and destroy' hits on salivating old geezers. Gilbert Wynne who Shonteff also used in Permissive and Night After Night After Night really fits the part of Clegg like a glove. Not unlike Mike Pratt he has a disheveled cool quality about him, and the kind of face that suggests its owner hasn't slept for a week. The image of Clegg in his cheap suit shooting to death two gangsters in an approaching car, actually makes you think of Reservoir Dogs, though I'm sure its just coincidence. Still this is a hyper-violent film for 1969, with the kind of amoral anti-hero who doesn't mind shooting people in the back with a machine gun or kicking a terrified man out of his car for him to be shot to death. Clegg is also something of a ladies man, in fact he goes through girlfriends in a manner that makes James Bond look celibate by comparison. Its an aspect of the film that to be honest doesn't really seem that credible, especially given Clegg's otherwise loser/loner persona. You tend to suspect these sex/nudity elements were added just to ensure a sale, if so it worked and not surprising the film was quickly snapped up by Tigon, who subsequently used it as the support film to Haunted House of Horror. Clegg is testament to Shonteff's ability to make fast paced, action filled films on a low budget, with a couple of truly bizarre elements (a henchman who growls like a dog, a mansion full of women suggestively licking lollipops) thrown in for good measure. And at the end of Clegg's journey who should we meet but Gary Hope, something of a familiar face in Shonteff films. Hope is perhaps most notable for sounding allot like Nicholas Parsons, and his intense turns in Shonteff's films- most notably Big Zapper- offer the surreal answer to what Parsons' career would have been like had he pursued unhinged psychopath roles rather than hosting Sale of the Century (nice to learn, via their IMDb pages, that Hope and Wynne are still working, by the way). Also look out for a brief, but quite unforgettable appearance by Sue Bond (billed here as "Suzy Bond"). Future Benny Hill girl and later star of Shonteff's The Yes Girls, as an extra seen walking out of a shop wearing only a huge pair of knickers. Absolutely no reason is given why she is walking out of a shop wearing just knickers (she's credited as "panties girl") nor is this followed up in the film, and anyone watching this on video/DVD will probably hit rewind just to double check what they've seen, while anyone watching this on its original cinema release must have thought they'd just hallucinated. Though given Sue's current 'revisionist' take on her career, she would no doubt like people to believe they had hallucinated her appearance in this and many other films, ho hum.

Incompetent and violent but occasionally endearing

[Skint111 · 3/10 · 28 April 2006]

This being a Lindsay Shonteff film you expect the worst but by his standards it's not that bad. Repeat: BY HIS STANDARDS. Which were never terribly high. Clegg is a movie that would like to be a lot better than it is and has lofty ambitions but never has the cleverness to achieve them. The plot is mildly intriguing (old men are getting cards telling them they will soon die) but never really goes anywhere, and to say there's a lack of sympathy for the lead character would be an understatement. He gives us a voice-over narration of a fairly hackneyed nature throughout. The film really runs out of steam by the end - it's like the director couldn't think of any novel way to wrap things up. On the plus side there's some nice location shooting of 1969 London, which looks as beautiful as 1960s London always did. Hard to catch nowadays, Clegg is a movie unlikely to turn up on terrestrial TV - maybe on cable in the middle of the night though.