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The
British film 'Plunkett and Macleane' was an unusual film. Influenced by the flood of
British crime films which were being made ('Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' etc) this
is essentially an update of the highway robber period crime drama. It could be that the
producers were trying to breathe life into a genre considered dead and buried ,much like
'The Unforgiven' did for the western, but the mix of period drama with 20th century
vocabulary and 'attitude' doesn't really work though it remains a watchable oddity. A
bright spot was Neve Mackintosh who played a titled lady falling for one of the highwayman
and who helped with rescuing him from the gallows.
Gayle Hunnicutt is a Texan but for some reason turns up time and time again in British made films and TV series, not that I am complaining. She has classic good looks and has over the decades has managed to subsume early impressions that she is a lightweight actress. In an episode of the British TV series 'Sherlock Holmes' she played an aristocrat mixed up in international intrigue.
As
with the highwayman genre (see above) the pirate film has also lost most of it's
popularity in recent years. The last major attempt to make a pirate film starred Geena
Davis and flopped badly. The film 'Cutthroat Island' wasn't bad just a bit old fashioned
for modern tastes. In the fifties and sixties numerous pirate films were made, many on
continental Europe. One such film was 'Tiger of the Seven Seas' and starred Italian
actress Gianna Maria Canale as a swashbuckling woman driven to piracy by greed and
passion. She also starred as a pirate in an earlier film 'Queen of the Pirates'.
Another take on the Sherlock Holmes stories was the film 'Without a Clue'. The twist in this story was the premise that Sherlock Holmes was merely an actor fronting for the real genius in crime detection Dr. Watson. Michael Caine amiably played the role of Holmes who is bamboozled and bewildered by arch enemy Professor Moriarty and his beguiling spy in the Holmes household (played by the versatile Lysette Anthony who often plays dangerous women).
'Cribb' was a UK produced detective series based on the books of Peter Lovesey. The stories concern the adventures of Scotland Yard detective 'Cribb' and his faithful sidekick and are set in Victorian times. The production values were high which is probably why so few episodes were made - t was just too expensive. Being set in Victorian England meant there were few opportunities to have women as the protagonist in any particular episode. However the story 'Invitation to a Dynamite Party' did feature the following lady (played by Jeananne Crowley) who was involved in Irish revolutionary activities such as stealing weapons from a Government armory together with plans to build a submarine to further her aims. An incompetent minion is just about to be fatally reprimanded.
