If nothing else, Terence Young's The Klansman has you feeling persistently outraged and repulsed, which seems like the broadly right reaction to a drama about modern-day Southern racism. It's generally a bit unclear to what extent this reflects conscious sociological engagement and illumination, versus tasteless pot-boiling, but the ambiguity isn't uninteresting in itself. It's tempting to credit co-writer Samuel Fuller for what's most interesting in the film - usually when it looks beyond the rather ploddingly ugly foreground drama to explore the wretchedly symbiotic coexistence between white fear of blackness and its economic dependence on it. There's an acknowledgement for instance of how the black population in the county actually outnumbers the white, thus providing constant fuel for voter intimidation mechanisms, and the film is pretty good on how the Klan bastardizes language and religious precepts (in these regards as in numerous others, the film's substance feels less dated than its surface). The plot turns around sheriff Bascomb's attempts to maintain equilibrium in the community when various events, including a white woman's rape and a voting rights demonstration, stir up the perpetually stir-ready Klansmen (that is, basically, the entire local male population) - his concessions are monstrously favourable to the racists who occupy the driver's seat, but of course it's never enough. The film surely spends too much time wallowing in swaggering interactions, and it's hard to look kindly at its relative treatment of white and black female sexuality and its violation - it lacks anything as cinematically or thematically powerful as the central concept of Fuller's later White Dog. Unless that is you react a certain way to the presence of O. J. Simpson as a one-man avenger, essentially occupying his own space within the movie, just as he does in the movie of our lives. Young's film fails particularly in its ending, delivering us merely to inevitable mass violence and destruction, and to a predictably bitter closure lacking in any broader meaning or implication.

I remember watching ITV in 1981 and this film being trailed quite heavily to kickstart the station's Autumn season . In those days we only had three television stations and while THE KLANSMAN isn't blockbuster material on a par with GONE WITH THE WIND it did look quite exciting with Lee Marvin getting in to a battle with some nasty looking dudes wearing white bed sheets . For some unexplained reason it got pulled from the schedule just before broadcast never to be heard of again . Jumping forward to the internet era this film has something of a reputation of being rabidly racist and ill thought out and whatever message it is trying to send out is drowned in a explotitive sea of racist insults and violence . Not being put off by this I decided to seek it out to see if its notorious reputation is deserved . To be fair 1981 was another country where LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR was a fondly remembered situation comedy and we do live in more sensitive times . After seeing THE KLANSMAN I was slightly shocked as to why ITV bought the film or indeed how someone could make as recently as 1974 . This tells you how bad it is when viewed today in 2013 I'll defend it on the grounds it's not even intelligent enough to be classed as offensive because it's inept on every level of film making and is sometimes so bad I laughed out loud and gasped " WTF was that about " A white woman is raped and this raises racial tensions in a small Alabama town , the sort of small Alabama town that doesn't need any inciting incidents to cause racial tensions . Take this sensitive speech by the town mayor who looks like Jerry Falwell :" I'll tell ya we're not gonna have any trouble from outside agitators , not while I'm mayor . I spoke to the grand dragon in Birmingham and he say's the Klan is gonna do nothing so we ain't gonna be bombing no churches [ Loud disappointed moans ]I'm the damn exalted Cyclops and what I mean is this none of us want a bunch of agitators , whores , punks , scum , atheists , perverts all controlled by the communists coming in here bothering our n--ggers " so I guess an excess of racism is also tied in with an excess of solecism .By the way have I mentioned this town Mayor is relatively liberal and secular compared to most of the citizens of the county ? When the rape victim goes in to church she finds herself becoming part of the sermon as in " Get out , how can you push yourself on to good Christian folk when you have been in that n--ggers foul embraces ? " Remember this is a rape victim we're talking about whose husband has left her because of " working in the market cutting up pork chops in front of a lady who is dying to ask me what's it like having a wife who's been with a n--gger " . You do get the impression this might be a film along the lines of THE ETERNAL JEW on rednecks is directed by Malcolm X but don't worry because the main black character is played by OJ Simpson and he's as every bit as racist as the klansmen One can perhaps understand ITV bought the film on the strength that it starred Lee Marvin and Richard Burton and thought " Oh two big names must be good " only to find out the film's content . Regardless of the content this wouldn't be a good enough reason to buy it . Marvin is merely okay but Burton ? Oh dear his performance is an all time low . It's said that he spends so many scenes either sitting down or lying down because he'd drank so much his legs had stopped working . It's not difficult to believe this as he mumbles , slurs his words and his accent moves from a Welsh brogue to an idiosyncratic accent all of its own . When Marvin and Burton characters discuss having a drink you can't help thinking there's a meta-fictional scene happening I don't think I've ever seen a film like this before and I'm pretty firm that I won't be seeing anything like it again . It's incompetent on so many levels and yet it's one of those very , very few films that that almost lives up to the cliché as being so bad it's good . I say almost because there's nothing actually good about it but did manage to make me laugh while my jaw was on the ground and while it probably deserves 1/10 it is far funnier than BLAZING SADDLES even though that film was meant to be a comedy unlike this one

I've witnessed movies about the American South that were awful and embarrassing, but this one goes overboard. Nothing or nobody in it is worth the one hour and 41 minutes of time it takes to suffer through this banal piece of junk. First off, here's poor Richard Burton limping about and trying to sound southern, but seems to have given this disguise up half-way through. Then Lee Marvin grunts and growls his one-dimensional sheriff's part with little conviction, so as to make O.J. Simpson's acting seem Olivier-like by comparison. That's right, Simpson's in it and playing the hero, no less. Rumor has it that Burton and Marvin were drunk during most of the filming. Shoot...they both had to be drunk when they first were handed the script.Seems the Burton character has drawn the wrath of the KKK by allowing poor blacks to live on his land rent-free, while taking in rape victims whose attackers were of the opposite race. They want him to leave town and, of course, he won't. So they come to burn him out. What needed burning is this stinker that sends the cause of good race relations back a century or two. I give "The Klansman" * 1/2 stars, with much credited to Johnny Walker.

What was director Young (Dr. No) thinking of taking on this project?! This is every bit as bad as I've heard. To begin with, there's the script, certainly among the worst ever written. Then there's the acting, very stereotypical of its day, except with the stars, Marvin and Burton, who clearly have no idea what they are doing here and don't really care. Then there's the anachronisms - the script belongs to the '60s, it's 5 years out of date. Then of course the morality - while the Klan is rightly to be condemned, can a black murderer be justified? Can he just be asked to leave the county as the sheriff does here? Ridiculous. And then there's the "action" climax - confusing and improbable.Was Young high when he did this? I can't think of any other excuse.Bad when not just awful.