1971 was a great year for British gangster movies. Not only did we get the masterpiece Get Carter but also the lesser-known Villain. These two films would usher in a new era of crime cinema and television.

Richard Burton plays Vic Dakin, a psychopathic London gangster. He’s planning on robbing a delivery of wages being made to a factory but has to get the blessing of a fellow gangster as the robbery will take place on his turf. With this, proceedings start to become more complicated and spiral out of control.

Within Villain there appears to be several parallels with the real-life Kray Twins and it’s rumoured that Burton liaised with them in prison as research for the role. Burton seems to have rolled both Krays into one single character.

Dakin is shown as being especially close to his mother and is shown taking in the milk from outside her house and waking her up after a hard night of being involved in less wholesome activities in the city. He is also shown taking his mother to Southend for a day out to the seaside. She seems completely oblivious (perhaps intentionally) to her son’s criminal activities.

Dakin is also gay. Ian McShane plays Wolfe, a pretty boy who owes Dakin money and is paying it off sexually. In a restored scene that was excised from initial prints of the film, we see Dakin take Wolfe to his bedroom and whilst appearing loving and sensual, suddenly punches Wolfe in the stomach. He then promises that he’ll take Wolfe out the next day to buy him whatever he wants. It’s obvious that this use of physical force is Dakin’s particular kink. The scene then fades to black. This is heady subject matter, especially for the times. Burton wrote about this in his diaries and admitted that it was all ‘ripe stuff’. Burton said to McShane that he reminded him of his beau Elizabeth Taylor which would provide the spark for their onscreen relationship.

Theres more spicy material in the film as Wolfe ‘procures’ women for the MP Gerald Draycott (played by Donald Sinden). There seems to be shades of Lord Boothby, another character from the Kray’s history to Sinden’s character.

This is also a controversial film as the levels of violence were more in line with its cinematic peer Get Carter and TV show The Sweeney. Villain is graphic, gritty but never needlessly gratuitous. The scene in which the wages snatch happens is expertly directed and choreographed and is strangely beautiful especially when the red smoke is set off. You haven’t lived until you see Dickie Burton with a stocking over his head.

I also love how the city of London in all of its many guises is almost like another character in the film. We get to see the traditional grandeur of Central London, but also the newer satellite suburbs that are either newly built or still in the process of being constructed. Just as Villain was seen as brokering in a new, grittier era for filmmaking, some of the film’s environs can also be seen as an introduction to a new stage in the history of the city. There is plenty of brutalist architecture that is always a welcome sight. I also love the fact that I know some of the film’s locations. The bank that the gang are watching is situated on a street in Hounslow near where I studied film at university. It eventually became a Yates Wine Lodge. What a comedown!

The audience is also taken inside establishments which it may not have been taken before be it Draycott’s mansion, a traditional boozer or a sleazy nightclub. This adds character to Villain and its proceedings. These spaces add so much to the film’s character.

Villain is a treat for the audience and I’m so glad it’s finally being seen by a new generation of film lovers due to a fantastic new Blu-ray release.