User Reviews

Sometimes the past is best left undisturbed. This picture was a favourite of mine and used to play often on 70's television, usually in a late-night slot. I had thought of it as a tense, gritty movie full of exciting action and superb performances. Then it mysteriously disappeared from our screens, so when the opportunity arose recently to view it once again, I jumped at the chance.

Oh dear.

Based on the novel 'The Ordeal Of Major Grigsby' by John Sherlock, 'The Last Grenade' begins in the Congo. A mercenary unit, headed by Major Harry Grigsby ( Stanley Baker ), is waiting to be picked up by a helicopter by one of their number, Kip Thompson ( Alex Cord ). Instead he has changed sides and wipes them out en masse - laughing like a maniac as he does so - before blowing up their camp for good measure. Only Grigsby survives, swearing revenge.

Some time later, he is back in England and recovering from tuberculosis in a sanitarium when the British Government ( naturally bothered by an American mercenary's activities in a foreign land ) asks him to kill Thompson who has been making a nuisance of himself in China by making cross border raids. You would think they would prefer to use someone in better health, but that's politicians for you.

Taking along other mercenaries - including Julian Glover and John Thaw ( criminally wasted in such a small role ), he sets about hunting for his hated adversary. They eventually meet, but instead of killing Grigsby where he stands, Thompson puts him in solitary confinement, from which he is able to escape easily. This lapse in logic is not isolated; as the film progresses, other opportunities crop up for Thompson to remove Grigsby, but for reasons unexplained, he chooses not to do so. We know of course why - the story would have ended there and then.

Harry then begins an affair with Katherine ( Honor Blackman ), the good-looking wife of General Whiteley ( Richard Attenborough - also wasted in this movie ), and considers calling off the search for Thompson ( forgetting of course that he has been paid to do the job by British tax-payers ) and settle down to a life of domestic bliss.

Thompson has other ideas and kills Katherine ( he was really after her husband, but never mind ). So now Harry is full of fury once more, and storms off into the rainy forests to look for Kip. You think a big fight is coming, but no, it does not and suddenly the credits are rolling up the screen.

Watching this the other night I wondered how on earth the writers - one of whom was James Mitchell, creator of 'Callan' - thought that they could get away with such blatantly obvious plot holes, some of which are big enough for Thompson to fly his helicopter through. Even my wife ( a confirmed soap opera addict ) spotted them, which tells you all you need to know.

Baker makes a convincing mercenary - all moustache and muscles, upper lip trembling in anticipation of the final kill - more so than the cast of 'The Wild Geese' combined. Harry using a corpse as a trap for Thompson is in character, but his decision to stop hunting for Thompson to move in with Katherine is not. As the giggling psycho, Alex Cord's performance surely must have been a big influence on Christopher Walken when he played 'Max Zorin' in the Bond movie 'A View To A Kill' fifteen years later. Ray Brooks is around too, but got better dialogue when he did 'Mr.Benn'.

On the plus side, there is impressive location filming in Spain ( doubling for the Congo ) and China. The opening massacre gets the film off to a thundering start. But from then on, it is all downhill, as the plot wanders around in circles. We do not even get to see Grigsby and Thompson engage in hand-to-hand combat. Gordon Flemyng, the director, was also responsible for the two 'Dr.Who' movies of the '60's starring Peter Cushing, and you will find more excitement in those than this.

If you enjoyed 'The Last Grenade' in 1970, then to preserve your happy memories do not watch it now. Believe me, 'The Wild Geese' is 'Apocalypse Now' by comparison.

A truly awful adaptation of the book, "The Ordeal of Major Grigsby." The amazing thing about this film is the huge amount of talent in the cast that simply cannot save the hopeless muddle of implausible story and bad film-making.

The story revolves around two mercenary soldiers, played by veteran Stanley Baker and relative newcomer Alex Cord. In the first scene, set in Africa, Cord changes sides and wipes out Baker's mercenary unit. Baker is later hired by the British Government (yeah, they did this a lot) to go over the border from Hong Kong to deal with a Chinese guerrilla outfit headed by, of course, Alex Cord. On his first excursion into "Injun Territory", Baker is ambushed and captured by Cord, and his entire unit is again massacred. From there things just get worse. Baker escapes so he can have a fling with Honor Blackman, who is married to Richard Attenborough, the local military commander. This part of the movie drags on seemingly forever, but eventually Baker gets back into the bush for the inevitable final showdown with Cord. Rarely is the end of a film so welcome. I haven't seen this movie anywhere for about 30 years. Wonder why.

Stanley Baker and Alex Cord are at each other's throats in "Dr. Who" director Gordon Flemying's "The Last Grenade," a gritty but anti-climatic actioneer about honor among mercenaries. Mind you, this film has the distinction of living up to its title. You may like it more than I or you may like it less than I, but you'll have to agree that "The Last Grenade" lives up to its title. The problem here is that the narrative wanders off course for an improbable as well as unconvincing romantic affair. Freshman scenarist Michael Ware could have given our hero a romantic interest with more connection to the plot. Honor Blackman is the lady in question. Baker plays Major Harry Grigsby as somebody afflicted with tuberculosis. He makes a sympathetic as well as believable character, but he suffers the most damnable ill luck. Basically, he is the kind of hero who takes a beating right up to the end before he surprises the villain with fatal consequences. Meantime, Flemying has assembled an distinguished cast, orchestrated the action against colorful scenery, and derived the benefits of Alan Hume's first-rate cinematography. Unfortunately, as mercenary movies go, "The Last Grenade" isn't half as good as either "Dark of the Sun" or "The Wild Geese." "The Last Grenade" cannot even compare with the Stallone & Statham "Expendables" epics. Indeed, despite strong performances, this 94-minute melodrama qualifies as second-rate fare. The film never recovers from a spectacular opening aerial massacre. Flemying stages several fights, but the arena and the size of those scenes shrinks rather than enlarges. The two leads cultivate a blood feud between themselves that infuses "The Last Grenade" with its primary source of energy. We want to see our hero finally outwit the villain. Indeed, he does but at an extreme cost.

At 42, Major Harry Grigsby (Stanley Baker of "The Guns of Navarone") has survived the best and the worst. Grigsby is waiting his friend, Kip Thompson (Alex Cord of "Stagecoach"), to fly his army of mercenaries out of the Congo. Ostensibly, Harry believes Kip will save the day when he swoops in on a helicopter to pick up his men. Imagine Grigsby's horror when Kip opens fire with a machine gun on Grigsby's men. Grigsby realizes he has been sold out by the greedy Thompson. Kip wipes out all but a handful of Grigsby's men. Suffering as he does from tuberculosis, Grigsby manages to get back to London when he recuperates. Nevertheless, rage smolders within him about Kip's treachery. Later, Grigsby learns from a government bureaucrat that the Red Chinese have Kip on their payroll. Whitehall is willing to foot the bill to send Grigsby to Hong Kong, but the elusive Kip kills one of his men in cold blood and captures Grigsby. Resourceful to a fault, Grigsby manages to escape. Grigsby's escape is cool. You don't see what he does in every adventure movie. Nevertheless, the Major feels like the deck is stacked against him. While Grigsby recovers in the hospital from his injuries,. Katherine Whitely (Honor Blackman), the wife of Grigsby's Hong Kong liaison, invites herself to visit him. This is a romance of convenience as you'll soon come to learn. Nothing about it seems credible given the circumstances. She comes to see him enough that she decides to divorce her husband, General Charles Whiteley (Richard Attenborough of "The Great Escape"), to live with Harry. You know that a romance between a mercenary and a woman with a relentless villain lurking in the background is not going to end well.

Ultimately, "The Last Grenade" isn't a fun movie, but it is well-made.