The Ruling Class (1972)

Aristocrat Ralph Gurney, the 13th Earl of Gurney, dies from accidental auto-asphyxiation while dressed in a tutu. His mentally-disturbed son Jack (Peter O'Toole) takes over most of the estate despite his delusions of being Jesus Christ. His uncle Sir Charles and wife Lady Claire are infuriated. Charles and Claire pair up his mistress Grace with Jack. Their plan is to marry them off and send him to an institution. It goes off course as Grace falls for Jack as Dr. Herder tries to cure him.

This stage play is filmed without much imagination. It all falls on O'Toole to give this movie life. It's rather flat without him. It tries to skewer the British aristocrats but they are rather easy targets. It's a black comedy with limited laughs. Alastair Sim has a supporting role. This movie needs more O'Toole and limit the scenes without him.

Fmovies: Gross, frequently tasteless satire, much as if Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove" were transplanted to England's House of Lords and then played at the wrong speed. After the Earl of Gurney accidentally kills himself during one of his fetish games, the 14th Earl--son Jack--is groomed to accept the crown. Once mad Jack--who believes himself to be Christ--undergoes a mental transformation on the night of his son's birth and self-metamorphoses into Jack the Ripper, the plot (thin to begin with) becomes a dartboard for the one-liners (some of which are very funny and are a compensation). Peter Barnes adapted his play for the screen, the kind of material upper-crust audiences like to label 'savage'; he was reciprocated with a game cast and a fine director in Peter Medak, yet these nutty fantasies are merely clotheslines for Barnes to hang his maddening soliloquies on. Peter O'Toole (with cartoony strawberry-blond hair) has some terrific moments early on, particularly in the musical send-ups, but later begins to bellow and rarely stops. The film is too full of targets, and too nasty overall, for its extreme length...it doesn't even look good. ** from ****

Mind blowing, superior satire on the class system in Britain, with a once in a lifetime cast (Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim "The Zambeesi Missions", Arthur Lowe "Alexi Kronstadt...Revolutionary!", Coral Browne, William Mervyn and so forth). Cinematically, the British have long proved that no one has a better sense of humor, or is as self critical of them, than they themselves. Perhaps, as the saying goes, "It keeps the old girl honest."

This scathing comedy takes no prisoners, whether engaging in outlandish situational dialogue or performers suddenly zipping out in a song and dance routines. There are too many individual gems of dialogue to count (although a personal fave is O'Toole's talk with Mrs. Piggot-Jones and Mrs. Treadwell). The performances are delivered with just the right amount of relish and timing. A modern classic. Highly recommended.

The Ruling Class fmovies. This is an excellent movie, but don't watch it expecting it to be purely a dark comedy. There is a lot of humor in it--often very bizarre humor--but it is primarily a very powerful statement about what can happen when, for the sake of social acceptability, a human mind is forced into a mold that doesn't fit. In my opinion, the British ruling class was chosen to illustrate this point only because they do have very rigid rules about what kind of behavior is socially acceptable and what is simply "not done." It's statement about the dangers of excessive self-repression apply equally to us all.

No other actor has had a career filled with more idiosyncratic roles than Peter O'Toole, and his role in "The Ruling Class" is perhaps the most idiosyncratic of them all.

O'Toole plays the heir to a British House of Lords who dies accidentally (and bizarrely), leaving his family to hash out the estate. The family is much disturbed by the fact that O'Toole is the heir -- understandably so, since he believes that he's Jesus Christ. Much wackiness ensues, until O'Toole has a change of perspective and decides that instead of Christ, he's Jack the Ripper. More wackiness ensues, the film gets darker and darker in that way that only British films can, and the whole thing may leave you scratching your head but will no doubt also leave you gloriously entertained.

For O'Toole fans, this is a chance to see him single-handedly carry a delirious mess of a movie on his shoulders, and make a rousing success out of it. Much of it doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's all a hoot, especially the impromptu musical numbers peppered throughout the film. There's some scathing satire aimed at the British class system, but it's nothing you haven't seen before, and the whole film has the feeling of being the pet project of an undisciplined director. But I highly recommend this, because you've never seen anything quite like it, and it's a chance to see one of our generation's greatest actors strutting his stuff like the pro that he is.

Grade: A

A scathing and profoundly witty attack on Britain's social and political institutions with Peter O'Toole on his best ever form as Jack, the Son of an English Earl who inherits his Father's estate when the old man accidentally kills himself via auto-erotic asphyxiation. The only problem for Jack's relatives is that he's a paranoid Schziophrenic who thinks he's Jesus and they're quick to move for his indefinite committal when he starts to talk about the relinquishing of material possessions and tolerance toward all men. The Ruling Class is a film of two halves. The first is some of the best character comedy you'll ever see. As "JC" who wears glasses because he's cold, O'Toole commands every scene benefiting from some superbly written monologues and one liners, the standout being his pre-wedding speech on the cross and he's assisted by the creme de la creme of British character actors, Arthur Lowe a standout as the newly liberated Trokskyite Butler Tuck with a blatant contempt for his old masters. The second half however, is dark stuff indeed - jet black in fact. Apparenty 'cured' after an arranged confrontation with the AC-DC messiah, Jack dresses as a Victorian gentleman, talks about capital punishment and superior breeding and concerns no-one, the fact he believes himself to be Jack the Ripper going completely unnoticed by his peers who prime him for his climatic accession to the House of Lords. The conceit is milked for all its worth and the final scenes with a hallucinatory Jack looking at his fellow peers in the House as decayed corpses is a particularly chilling postscript to the story. Subtle? No way but its sledgehammer to the concept of patronage and privilege as a criteria for governance and influence. Like the best satire its savage, angry stuff - possibly overlong and too conscious of its theatrical origins but ultimately no less caustic or inventive for it. Class indeed.