Royal Flash (1975)

Royal Flash follows the adventures of a scoundrel.  While fleeing the London police in 1842, Captain Harry Paget Flashman (Malcolm McDowell) has a chance encounter with Lola Montez (Florinda Bolkan) and Otto Von Bismark (Oliver Reed).  While Bismark tries to expose him to the police, Lola protects him.  Soon, Harry is having an affair with Lola and has made an enemy of Bismark.  The affair with Lola is short-lived and ends poorly.  In 1847, Harry receives a summons from Lola.  She is now the Countess of Landsfeld and the mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria.  She has a lucrative offer for him.  Greed and another chance to bed Lola prove an irresistible lure for Harry.  No sooner does he arrive than he is forced to flee with Rudi Von Sternberg (Alan Bates).  He soon finds himself in the hands of Bismark, who has great plans for German unification.  Flashman bears an uncanny resemblance to Prince Carl Magnus and Bismark proposes that he stand in for the absent Prince, who is supposed to marry Duchess Irma (Britt Ekland) of Strackenz.  This is, in fact, a Prisoner of Zenda movie.  There is constant plotting and backstabbing.

The film has the same campy feel as Richard Lester's The Three Musketeer (1973) and The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge (1974).  Sadly, it doesn't work this time around.  Much as I like Malcolm McDowell, he is terribly cast.  Flashman is 6'2" and broad-shouldered.  He looks the hero but acts the coward and bully.  Imagine John Wayne taking a role as a cad, coward, and thief; yeah, that's Flashman.  McDowell is only 5'8" and stick thin.  He fits the sniveling coward too well, especially in the wake of his most famous role as Alex in A Clockwork Orange.  He doesn't have the charisma to pull off a roll like Flashman.  Likewise, Florinda Bolkan is wrong for Lola.  When we first meet Lola in 1842, she should be 21 years old, whereas Bolkan is 34.  Lola was Anglo-Irish and had merely adopted a Spanish stage name, but Bolkan is Brazilian and has a dark Mediterranean complexion.  Oliver Reed makes for an excellent Bismark and Alan Bates is entertaining as Rudi.  Britt Ekland is bland as Irma, but it is a tiny and bland role.  It was funny to see Bob Hoskins as a London Constable before he was a big name.

Though planned as the first of a series, it did not do well at the box office.  The author of Flashman, George MacDonald Fraser, wrote the screenplay.  He had also done the screenplays for Lester's Musketeer movies.  Heroic campiness is more charming than cowardly campiness.  Bob Hope was great at playing the horny coward who was still likeable; McDowell doesn't have that talent.

Mediocre.