Shout at the Devil (Blu-ray Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Feb 19, 2025
• Format: Blu-ray Disc
• 

Director

Peter R. Hunt

Release Date(s)

1976 (January 28, 2025)

Studio(s)

Tonav Productions/American International Pictures (Kino Lorber Studio Classics)

• Film/Program Grade: B
• Video Grade: B+
• Audio Grade: B
• Extras Grade: B-

Review

Shout at the Devil is a rousing period action/adventure of the type that they just don’t make anymore, which isn’t surprising considering that when it was originally released in 1976, it was already the kind of period adventure that was falling out of favor, at least in terms of mainstream filmmaking. The New Hollywood school of filmmaking had taken over at that point, even in terms of the international market, and old-fashioned adventures like Gunga Din didn’t quite fit that mold. It took an old-school filmmaker like John Huston to revive them with The Man Who Would Be King in 1975, but while it garnered positive reviews and is now revered as a classic, it wasn’t particularly successful at the box office. Yet that didn’t stop producer Michael Klinger from making Shout at the Devil the following year, although to be fair, he had acquired the rights to the Wilbur Smith novel back in 1969. It just took that long to get the project off the ground.

In the meantime, Klinger would also end up securing the rights to Smith’s follow-up novels Gold Mine, The Sunbird, Eagle in the Sky, and The Eye of the Tiger. He first tested the waters with Gold in 1974, which was an adaptation of Gold Mine. That was a modern-day globetrotting adventure, and the lack of period detail made it cheaper to produce. Thanks in no small part to securing the current James Bond actor Roger Moore as the lead, Gold was quite successful, so Klinger used it as a template when he raised significantly more money to make Shout at the Devil. He brought back Moore to play the lead again, and he retained director Peter Hunt as well. Hunt was of course also a veteran of the James Bond franchise, and he brought along members of his old crew like cinematographer Michael Reed, second unit director John Glen, production designer Syd Cain, title designer Maurice Binder, and miniature effects virtuoso Derek Meddings. (Glen would end up paying that forward by elevating his second unit cameraman Alan Hume to cinematographer on the first three Bond movies that he directed: For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, and A View to a Kill.) Shout at the Devil may have been a period film, but it displayed plenty of contemporary craftsmanship.

Wilbur Smith had based Shout at the Devil loosely (very loosely) on the real-life sinking of the German cruiser SMS Königsberg during World War I, but his story is almost entirely a work of fiction. The film adaptation opens up with a title card that states: “This story is based on a remarkable but true incident that took place in Africa in 1913, before the Great War when the world was very different.” Yet even that date is pure fantasy, since the Königsberg wasn’t sunk until 1915—and it wasn’t so much sunk as it was scuttled after being damaged too severely. What does appear to be true is that maverick ivory hunter P J “Jungle Man” Pretorius aided the Royal Navy in locating the Königsberg when it was in hiding in the delta of the Rufiji river in then-German East Africa. Pretorius even snuck aboard the cruiser, disguised as an Arab worker, in order to determine whether or not it still had torpedoes aboard.

It’s Pretorius himself who became Smith’s primary inspiration for Shout at the Devil, far more than any specific details regarding his real-life mission. Pretorius was an adventurer who was the natural focus for an adventure story. In working on the cinematic adaptation of his novel along with screenwriters Stanley Price and Alastair Reed, Smith retained the basic structure of his re-imagined version of Pretorius’ adventures while simplifying many of the details and drastically altering the conclusion that he had originally cooked up. The Königsberg became the SMS Blücher, with Flynn (Lee Marvin) as the stand-in for Pretorius, and Englishman Sebastian Oldsmith (Moore) reluctantly joining him in his adventures. Flynn’s daughter Rosa (Barbara Parkins) provides the love interest for Sebastian, with Mohammed (Ian Holm) as Flynn’s loyal but mute manservant. Since the Blücher was a concrete but still dramatically nebulous target, the dissolute local German commander Fleischer (Reinhard Kolldehoff) serves as the story’s mustache-twirling villain.

Shout at the Devil is generally a good-natured, rollicking adventure, although there are some drastic tonal shifts that can be a little off-putting for new viewers. The humor is broad, verging on slapstick, but the violence is bloody and the consequences can be severe. While the adaptation does soften Smith’s original ending where pretty much no one survived, it does retain a particularly unpleasant tragic moment that fuels the motivations for both Sebastian and Rosa. It also doesn’t shy away from what Flynn and Sebastian do for a living, with an extended ivory hunt sequence where they shoot down elephant after elephant. While there’s a second title card at the beginning that states “the Producers wish to assure you that not a single animal was injured in the making of this film,” even if that’s true, it’s still unpleasant to watch.

Even more problematically, while Shout at the Devil may be a fine display of craftsmanship by the best contemporary filmmakers, the racial attitudes that it presents were already outdated even for 1976. It offers a casual, frivolous view of colonialism, and to say that its presentation of Black South Africans is a little cringeworthy would be an understatement. It’s filled with racially charged imagery like when Fleischer’s black troops surround and attack a white woman, with Hunt providing multiple closeups of their exaggeratedly leering faces that looks like something out of a minstrel show or even The Birth of a Nation. Holm plays Mohammed while wearing brownface makeup (although to be fair, he’s pretty funny in the part), and Roger Moore ends up wearing blackface at one point—it’s a story element in his case, but still. (The real-life Pretorius is the one who disguised himself, but he didn’t need any makeup since his leathery, sunbeaten features were already sufficient.) It doesn’t help that like Gold before it, Shout at the Devil was partly shot on location in South Africa under the grips of its apartheid regime, so racial sensitivity was clearly never the goal, and that proved controversial even back in 1976.

Yet none of that can take away from the fact that Shout at the Devil is indeed a well-crafted, entertaining adventure. Marvin overacts shamelessly, but the rest of the cast is in fine form (although Kolldehoff does his best to match Marvin ham-for-ham). Every penny of the budget is on display, including a full-scale mockup of the Blücher in its Rufiji hiding place—and the end result of Flynn and Sebastian’s mission is spectacularly large scale. Yet the most impressive craftsmanship of all in Shout at the Devil is courtesy Derek Meddings, who shot the 36ft long miniature of the Blücher in the open water off St. Thomas Bay in Malta with the open sea behind it. While a few shots get too close to the model and ruin the effect, most of his footage in the film could easily be mistaken for the real thing. Yet that’s emblematic of Shout at the Devil as a whole: sometimes, you have to take the bad along with the good. It’s an enjoyably old-school adventure that displays disappointingly old-school attitudes. Keep that in mind, and there’s still plenty to enjoy about the film.

Cinematographer Michael Reed shot Shout at the Devil on 35mm film using Panavision cameras with anamorphic lenses, framed at 2.35:1 for its theatrical release. There’s no information available about this master, but it looks like the same aging one that was used on the Shout! Factory/Timeless Media Group Blu-ray in 2013. The only difference is that this time it’s encoded onto a BD-50 instead of a BD-25. Either way, it appears to be based on a 2K (at best) scan of an interpositive rather than the negative. It’s reasonably sharp and detailed, at least during well-lit sequences, but the limited contrast range means that shadow detail is lacking. The black levels are good, but they do suffer from noticeable crush that obscures detail. There’s some light speckling and other detritus visible throughout, but no major scratches or other heavier damage. On the whole, the color balance is fine, but the flesh tones do veer into reddish-pink territory too much of the time, especially on Lee Marvin’s face (it’s easy to buy his skin looking ruddy, but not quite this pink). Overall, it’s a fine if somewhat dated transfer for Shout at the Devil, and since it’s highly unlikely to receive a fresh scan anytime in the near future, it’ll do.

Audio is offered in English 2.0 mono DTS-HD Master Audio, with optional English subtitles. The mix is generally clear and balanced, but some of the ADR does stand out like a sore thumb (although that was hardly uncommon in that era). It does sound a little thin, without much depth or dynamic contrast. Maurice Jarre’s jovial score suffers a bit in that regard, with the lack of bass extension making it sound weaker than it should. Like the video, though, it’s more than adequate.

Kino Lorber Studio Classics’ Blu-ray release of Shout at the Devil comes with a slipcover as well as a reversible insert featuring two different versions of the theatrical poster artwork. The following extras are included:

• Audio Commentary with Dwayne Epstein and Steve Mitchell
• Trailer (HD – 3:41)
• Sergeant Ryker Trailer (HD – 2:05)
• Paint Your Wagon Trailer (SD –1:06)
• Monte Walsh Trailer (SD – 3:20)
• Prime Cut Trailer (HD – 2:34)
• The Spikes Gang Trailer (SD – 2:39)
• The Great Scout & Cathouse Thursday Trailer (Upscaled SD – 2:37)
• Gorky Park Trailer (Upscaled SD – 2:24)
• Gold Trailer (HD – 3:56)
• Ffolkes Trailer (SD –2:14)
• Caravans Trailer (HD – 2:46)
• Wild Geese II Trailer (HD – 2:50)

The commentary pairs film historian Steve Mitchell with biographer Dwayne Epstein, author of Lee Marvin: Point Blank. The two of them contributed separate commentaries to Kino Lorber’s 4K release of Prime Cut, but this time they got the chance to work together. They go through the complicated prehistory of Shout at the Devil and offer plenty of stories about the production, with a natural emphasis on Marvin, but they give Moore and Parkins plenty of attention as well. (At one point, Mitchell calls himself a “case-by-case” Aldrich fan, so it’s probably for the best that Howard S. Berger didn’t join them for this one.) They offer an explanation for how the elephant hunting scene was filmed: supposedly, it was done at a reserve with rangers shooting the elephants with tranquilizers, although that explanation raises some disturbing questions of its own. Mitchell and Epstein also discuss the awkward tonal shifts in the film, and note its lack of political correctness. They struggle at a few points to remember specific details (and make a minor error or two), but it’s still an interesting track.

Shout at the Devil hasn’t received much love on home video prior to this point (the Shout!/Timeless Media disc was bare-bones), so even adding just a commentary track is an improvement over most previous releases. The only exception is the Region B Blu-ray from 88 Films in the U.K., which added a making-of documentary, a visual effects documentary, and an interview with Tony Klinger. If you have that disc, you’re definitely going to want to hang onto it. For those of us in Region A, however, Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray is a definite step up over all previous versions. Your own reactions to the film may depend on when you saw it—I’m not sure that its flaws will be quite as forgivable to anyone who didn’t originally watch it back in the day. It’s still an interesting artifact from the era—an ahistorical historical artifact, as it were. It’s an adventure that’s still recommended for adventurous viewers.

-Stephen Bjork

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