Royal Flash (1975)

Author George MacDonald Fraser's series of novels featuring a grown-up Harry Flashman, the bully from Tom Brown's Schooldays, were fun, but the character didn't survive the transition to film. Fraser had worked on the screenplay of director Richard Lester's Three Musketeers, but that film had a far stronger cast than this one. As Flashman, Malcolm McDowell lacks the necessary public school veneer and, despite effective support from the likes of Alan Bates (who would have been better cast in the lead role) and Oliver Reed (ditto), it's really hard to care what happens to him in this Prisoner of Zenda retread. Still, the women (Florinda Bolkan and Britt Ekland) are fun, the pace is relentless, and the period re-created with gusto; it just feels so disjointed and interminable. No other Flashman novels were filmed.