MovieChat Forums > Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) Discussion > Whatever Became of this Film in th U.K.?

Whatever Became of this Film in th U.K.?

posted 16 years ago by cmother1
7 replies | jump to latest

As an avid Vonnegut fan in the early 70s I'm amazed that I'd never heard of this film until 6 months ago. I watched it last night and was very impressed. It's a very creditable realisation of what , on the face of it, is an unfilmable book. I found it far more coherent and appealing than 'Breakfast of Champions' which is the only other film version of a Vonnegut novel that I've seen. I'm really surprised that it hasn't achieved major cult classic status. Did it ever get a general release even in the U.K.? I truly believe that it's an overlooked gem.

[–] 16 years ago

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[–] southwestern71 16 years ago

Slaughterhouse-Five did get a general release in the UK in 1972 & another of his books Mother Night was filmed in 1996 but if that got a general UK release I don’t know as I was living in Germany during that decade. I did see Mother Night on cable television in the USA while on holiday over there. The books & both films of these books featured a character called Howard W. Campbell Jr an American turned Nazi propagandist who moved to Germany directly after World War I and then later became alternately a well-known German language playwright and a Nazi propagandist who tries to convert Billy & the other American POW's to the Nazi cause.

Other films based on novels by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.:
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971)
Mother Night (1996)
Breakfast of Champions (1999)
Cat's Cradle (2011) in production

Mother Night first published 1961. The title of the book is taken from Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Faust.

Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance With Death (1969)

[–] ib011f9545i 15 years ago

I am too young to remember if it was on in the cinemas is 1972 but I do recall the much abused BBC showed it a few times over the years.
Was the book a big hit in Britain?

[–] tommyuk 15 years ago

It's difficult to find and not on UK TV because it's not supposed to be very good at least that's what I heard when I read the novel about 15 years ago and found out that a movie existed.I should check it out as George Roy Hill was a good director - Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid,The Sting, The Great Waldo Pepper along with Slap Shot and Funny Farm.

[–] Marmadukebagelhole 13 years ago

The BBC (and ITV for that matter) have pretty much given up on showing movies unless it's Christmas or they're showing a Pixar, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, a Potter or a Bond movie.

Film 4 are unlikely to show it because it's not (to my knowledge) appeared on any trendy list in Empire magazine lately and it's not a foreign horror film so the've got no campaign to hang on it.

I wish the free-to-air UK channels would show some balls and treat movies with some respect instead of everything having to be part of a season or "hip" to be worth showing.

Bringing back Moviedrome would be a start. No linkage, just a movie worth seeing introduced by someone that you trust knows what they are talking about. Even if it's Mark Cousins again.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] Squeeth2 12 years ago

Mark Cousins is going a bit far. English telly is a corpse with delusions of grandeur, we're better off with a dvd player.

Marlon, Claudia and Dimby the cats 1989-2005, 2007 and 2010.