So, being a huge fan of The Prisoner, I thought it might be interesting to watch some other Patrick McGoohan movies to see a) what else he did in his long (but sometimes obscure) film career, and b) how those movies stack up.

So, in jumping around timewise, the first is/was 1995’s Braveheart, PMcG’s last major film appearance. The first few times I’ve seen this movie I didn’t know who he was (it was in the sad, ignorant days before I had watched The Prisoner :)) but man is he evil in this movie as the English King Edward Longshanks, the primary villain trying to corrupt and eradicate (or at best hopelessly cripple) any possibility of Scottish freedom. This is simply a great movie, great performances all around, but P McG has to be considered among the best here, definitely. I’m slated to re-watch this in the coming weeks, so i’ll update more comments in a later post.

Next up was 1968’s Ice Station Zebra, a Cold War submarine flick P McG did with Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and football star Jim Brown during the waning days of filming The Prisoner in the late 60’s. P McG plays an elusive English spy (big surprise) on an American sub charged with investigating some troubling reports from an Arctic base that sent out emergency broadcasts and then went silent. With all apologies to Howard Hughes, this movie is BOR-ING. Roger Ebert is completely right on – I couldn’t finish it, gave up after the first hour. If you want a great sub movie, watch the over a decade-earlier Disney classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea; if you want a great cerebral special effects extravaganza, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey of the same year (which holds up well 40+ years later – that alone tells it all). Either of those movies are far more interesting and better in nearly every way. Sorry, P McG.

Next up – The Three Lives of Thomasina from 1964. This was an early 60’s movie he made (weird career choice IMHO vs his typical fare of the time – the complete opposite of spy thrillers and high drama) that is set in a Scottish village in 1912. He plays a stern, small-town veterinarian who is widowed with a small daughter and a cat, Thomasina. Controversy ensues, some harrowing things happen to the cat, but happiness results by the end (of course) and life lessons were learned by all, most notably by P McG. I had seen at least part of this movie when I was a kid, remembering the very weird ‘dream sequence’ narrated by the cat (gotta love 60’s movies and the obvious drug culture influences that often substitute for special effects or hallucinations). There are a number of moments that are outright funny, or simply bad acting by the kids in the movie – one of them looks like the ‘Scottish Peter Brady‘ – and according to kerewin, the youngest two of them were later ‘recycled’ in Mary Poppins as brother and sister. It’s not an action flick, but it does have a certain charm about it – and of course, P McG provides a few choice quotes, yelled in the shrill, increasing-anger voice he perfected later in The Prisoner – such as ‘That Cat has Tetanus!’. After watching this movie, I promised our cats I’d never take them to ‘Dr. McDhui’ – because P McG spends half the movie simply ‘putting down’ the animals he is too self-centered to otherwise care for and save. Ah, but that’s the tough life in turn-of-the-century Scotland, I guess 🙂

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