Overview: Reminiscent of Harold & Maude and Start the Revolution Without Me, this gentle comedy is the story of a man out of step with this world, marching to the beat of his own drum.

Quackser Fortune (Wilder) earns his living by following the horse-drawn delivery wagons of Dublin, scooping up the droppings and selling it as fertilizer. Margot Kidder is the American exchange student who finds herself drawn to this unlearned, but not unknowing man.

Blu-ray Verdict: For me, this film is a really odd and somehow compelling movie. Gene Wilder is an independent and none-too-bright guy in a working class Dublin family. He does quite a good job in the role. I never much liked him away from Mel Brooks, but I have to admit he was just right in this part. I’m no expert on the working class Dublin dialects, but he fooled my ear. I couldn’t even tell it was his voice!

Anyway, Wilder doesn’t want to spend his life working in a factory like his dad, so he creates a profession for himself. He follows the horse-drawn delivery wagons, shovels up the horse-dropping from the streets, and resells it from a pushcart, as fertilizer. (Get your fresh dung!) He loves this, the city loves him for it, and he is generally loved by everyone he meets along the way.

The problem is that the modern world is encroaching on the world he has built for himself; the horses are going to be shipped off to unpleasant fates, and Wilder has no skills to find another profession. He can’t even read or write.

Margot Kidder is the love interest of sorts, an adventurous American college student, and she was really college age (21) at the time it was filmed in Dublin, nearly a decade before she hit the big time as Lois Lane. She was very beautiful. Her character gradually seduces Quackser, and he thinks it’s love. For her it’s a frolic, which she regrets by the time they actually sleep together.

Just when things look bleakest for Quackser, without job or girl, there is a deus ex machina happy ending which spoiled for me an otherwise realistic and bittersweet movie. And yet, now here on beautiful Blu-ray via VCI, I still highly recommend a viewing of what is, for the most part, an incredibly impassioned film from back in the day. [S.P.]

Bonus Features:
Commentary track by Robert Kelly, artist, reviewer and film buff extraordinaire!
Restored original Theatrical Trailer

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