When Eight Bells Toll (1971)

Anthony Hopkins as an action hero?  Unless you are an old-timer or a movie buff, that might be hard to imagine.  It might be harder still to believe that, in this movie, his character was pitched as a James Bond alternative, and at one time, an entire franchise around him was envisaged.  From fisticuffs to gunfights, from wielding a crossbow to weaponising a welding torch underwater, he gets to show off his action hero skills to the hilt.

The curiosity value of that aside, Hopkins is fun to watch, but never more than when he throws around witty one-liners, or gets into waggish verbal exchanges.  And there are plenty of those.  We also get a glimpse of some traits that would become central to his Hannibal Lecter portrayal, twenty years later- the glint in the eye, the effortless switch from charming to ruthless.  In fact, one reviewer made the comparison thus:

Use some imagination, and perhaps this is Hannibal Lecter in an earlier vocation, before he went back to medical school.

Just don’t expect the plot to make much sense.

Here’s a link to the trailer.