The Ruling Class

Looks like this'll be the 100th DVD I've watched since I started this at the end of November last year, and what can it be?

The Ruling Class (Criterion #132). 1972 AVCO Embassy Films.
Starring: Peter O'Toole, Alastair Sim, Arthur Lowe, Harry Andrews, Coral Browne, Michael Bryant, Nigel Green, Carolyn Seymour, William Mervyn
Director: Peter Medak
Buy The Ruling Class (Criterion Collection) at Amazon.

Jack Gurney (O'Toole, in an Academy Award nominated performance), the 14th Earl of Gurney, is convinced that he is God. He shocks his family and friends with talk of returning to the world to bring it "love and charity", and we would be remiss if we didn't mention that Jack has a tendency to break into song and dance routines when he isn't sleeping upright on a cross. Any attempts to reason with Jack by using unpalatable facts get places right into his "galvanized pressure cooker".

An uncle, Sir Charles (Melvyn), marries Jack to his mistress Grace (Seymour), in hopes of the couple fathering a child that would rightfully inherit the peerage, so Jack can be confined to an institution. This plan backfires when Grace genuinely falls in love with Jack. Sir Charles' wife (Browne) also befriends Jack, since she hates her husband and wants to spite him. She also begins sleeping with Jack's psychiatrist Dr. Herder (Bryant) in an attempt to persuade him to cure Jack faster. Intense psychotherapy doesn't work, as Jack is confident that he is the God of love, and dismisses any suggestion to the contrary as the rambling of lunatics. Irony spoken here.

The night that Grace goes into labor with Jack's child, Dr. Herder introduces Jack to McKyle (Green), another mental patient that believes himself to be Christ, or the "Electric Messiah" as he puts it. Herder and McKyle subject an unsuspecting Jack to electroshock therapy, hoping to literally shock him out of his delusions. They hope to show Jack that two men could not both be God, and that he's suffering from delusions of grandeur. The plan works, and Jack comes to his senses just as Grace gives birth to a healthy baby boy. Sir Charles again tries to claim the title, sending for a court psychiatrist to evaluate Jack, but the two men bond, and Jack is declared sane.

Jack relapses into mental illness, believing himself to be Jack the Ripper. He murders Sir Charles' wife after she attempts to seduce him, and frames the Communist family butler Tucker (Lowe) for the crime, assuming his place in the House of Lords with his speech in favor of capital and corporal punishment, which gets a thunderous ovation, who have no idea that they're praising the rantings of a madman. After Grace professes her love for Jack, he murders her as well.

Another great, funny, and dark movie. Highly recommended, almost solely because of O'Toole's performance. Sadly, Nigel Green died due to an accidental overdose of sleeping pills after the film was completed.