New review: Absolution

For what feels like decades now (and actually is), people have asked me if any of the Harry Potters are going to appear on this website. “Why not, Chris?” they yell at me from passing cars. “They’re British, they have that old fashioned genre feel about them, and occasionally they’re a bit spooky. Plus they’re full of monsters and ghosts and shit.”

To which I yell after them, “Nope, no way. Mainly because they fall outside this website’s vague remit of only dealing with films up to about 1990-ish, but also because… oh, you’re too far away to hear me.”

But don’t worry, Hogwartians, or Pott-atos, or whatever the eff you call yourselves, because although the Harry Potter films will only appear on this website if I have a major middle age-related episode (which let’s face it, is pretty much on the cards), I’ve found something vaguely similar to fill the gap.

What do you get if you cross a hellraising actor from the 1960s, a fancy school setting, a game with baffling rules, a mysterious long-haired stranger and a troubling child mortality rate?*

Well, you might suggest one of the early Potters as your answer here, but I give you Absolution, the 1978 classic by the writer of the Wicker Man which brings together the talents of Richard Burton and Billy Connolly (sort of).

You can read the review of Absolution here.

*Richard Harris / Richard Burton; Hogwarts / the school in this one; Quidditch / cricket; Sirius Black / Blakey; kids die in the Harry Potter films all the time, don’t they? / watch the film and see. See, I don’t just throw this stuff together you know. It took me literally minutes to work out those similarities.