Brotherly Love

Peter O'Toole fans are quite familiar with the actor's zany turn as an insane English aristocrat in Peter Medak's madcap dark comedy The Ruling Class (1972). Fewer have seen this 1970 production, directed by J. Lee Thompson, set in much the same milieu but played straight. O'Toole is again all glib brio and charmingly blithe dissipation as Sir Charles “Pink” Pinkerton Ferguson, a dissolute noble satisfied with his school-age diagnosis of “low moral fiber” as he plays at being a gentleman farmer on a Scottish estate. Meanwhile he drinks, hunts, drives recklessly, and carouses. His slightly more sensible sister Hilary (Susannah York) also had a wild youth. When she flees her domineering husband (Michael Craig), Sir Charles eagerly welcomes her back under the same roof. But his antics prove too much even for Hilary. Suggestions of incest between the pair are kept mildly genteel in this high-decibel thespian showcase of florid speeches and upper-crust neuroses. Based on the 1961 novel Household Ghosts by Scottish author James Kennaway (as well as his own subsequent stage-play adaptation “Country Dance”), this star-powered film is not nearly as notable as The Ruling Class, but should be considered a strong optional purchase. (C. Cassady)