Funeral For An Assassin

A professional revolutionary escapes a South African prison, fakes his death, and sets a trap at a judge’s funeral that the whole regime is meant to attend. Ivan Hall’s 1974 Johannesburg-shot thriller stars Vic Morrow as Michael Cardiff, the imported American heavy in a local production built for export: English dialogue, dusty streets, one stubborn police captain (Peter van Dissel), and a plot that treats apartheid’s officialdom as the target. It belongs to a small, tough seam of 1970s South African grindhouse — low-budget action and crime pictures made under the National Party, sold abroad as exotic revenge programmers beside Italian crime and Filipino action, sometimes tagged “apartheid-sploitation.” Hall and writer-producer Walter Brough work fast and mean. The film was discussed on The Video Archives Podcast with Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary.