The Horsemen of Now (1974)

D. John Crosby
Colour


Here’s a deeply weird British film which cries out for a big budget Hollywood remake. Surely this is just sitting there waiting for, say, Tom Cruise as the good guy and maybe Christophe Waltz as the bad. If you throw in modern computer generated effects, a big budget and stunts that are clearly more than just toy trucks, then you probably have the makings of a fantastic franchise. As the film we have at the moment, the budget is nowhere near capable of taking on the frankly huge and bonkers ideas, and something epic needs surely to be done with it. However, having said all that, one of the things I really like about this film is the very British smallness of it. The fact that the entire world is clearly represented by a few streets in West London. The recognisability of the cast, being the usual British mix of jobbing stage actors and Carry On veterans. And most particularly the fact the good guy’s headquarters Is a greasy spoon café. This is a film of a dysfunctional future and I love that this particular dystopia has the whiff of greasy bacon sarnies.


Actually sod it. The yanks can stay away from this, I’m happy with the deeply weird and very British ‘The Horsemen of Now’ being exactly the way it is.


Richard Burton, looking weary and sounding gruff and seeming every inch the son of a coalminer from Pontrhydyfen, is Sammy – one of the leaders of this new world and a truck driver. Yes, you’ve read that right. In the future, after whatever happens takes place the truck drivers are the Kings. (Whatever this dreadful event actually is remains incredibly vague. Obviously it is cataclysmic, with the sky forever tinged pink and dust visible in the air, and trucks racing unimpinged by speed limits around Shepherd’s Bush.) These truckers get into the cabs, unwrap their Yorkies (probably, nothing is said to the contrary) and patrol the streets like the knights of olde. But they have an enemy. Travelling in their own London taxis, piloted by an army of undead cab drivers, we have The Sorcerers. That’s right, Sorcerers. In the future there is magic, it has been rediscovered and harnessed by these sorcerers, who intend to turn themselves into gods and enslave everybody left. It’s the power of the Earth against the mechanical brilliance of man in this skewed version of alchemy. At the head of the sorcerers is Patrick McGoohan, and the entire film is a wait for him and Burton to face off in what will clearly be an epic confrontation.


It’s an interesting dynamic, Burton’s hair is bleached a terrible honey blonde which makes him look like a particularly seedy member of the SS, while McGoohan is raggedly handsome and shot in heroic poses throughout. What’s more, traditionally in films, those harnessing the elemental powers of the Earth would be seen as the good guys, with the bad being those in control of the big, dusty, metal machines. And yet here it is the other way around. Brilliantly it is toil and sweat and being skilled with your hands that is seen as the good and useful thing, while magic is something airy and fairy and likely to be taught at Oxbridge. Yes, it’s the rise of the salt of the Earth, taking up their articulated vehicles and getting ready to punch the soft-hand layabouts in the face.


For some tastes this no doubt will be a bit talky. The budget isn’t high, so there’s a lot of Burton sat around a transport caff (chatting with, amongst others, fellow trucker Kenneth Conner, and proprietor Joan Sims) about what the hell those damned sorcerers are up to now. We do get a few scenes where black cabs pull up and their passengers do terrible things to a lone trucker, but clearly – from what Burton says – they are just the tip of a very strange and peculiar iceberg. Similarly McGoohan hangs out with his cohorts, in what looks to be some wood panelled magic seat of learning, and tells them what he’s going to do to Burton and then to the world when the day comes. (McGoohan was of course first choice for James Bond and turned it down, but here he is showing that his real skill would have been as the campest, most over the top Bond villain of all time!) It may seem a long wait but it ensures that tension is high at the end, when a convoy of trucks goes into battle against a fleet of black-cabs piloted by zombies and carrying a group of sinister magicians. As the vehicles roar, the manhole covers actually lift and the pavements are alternatively smashed up and bent by the warring parties, any wait seems fantastically worthwhile as it’s astounding how bonkersly brilliant it all is.


Actually I’ve changed my mind again. You can do this is you like, Tom. The original won’t disappear and I’d like to see the whole thing done on a proper big budget. Just please, Tom, try and keep as much of the brilliant weirdness as the studio will let you.