The Raging Moon (1971) on Netflix
Bruce Pritchard, an amateur footballer, is left needing a wheelchair by an incurable degenerative disease. At the church-run home where he lives he meets Jill Matthews, a fellow resident.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb6.9/10783 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
Bruce Pritchard is 24, comes from a working-class background and plays amateur football. His life changes when an incurable degenerative disease leaves him dependent on a wheelchair, and he enters a church-run home for disabled people, believing his family cannot care for him. The rules and regulations of the home irritate him, and he becomes withdrawn and angry. Jill Matthews, 31, also lives there; she is from a wealthy family and has used a wheelchair since she had polio. The two get to know each other, and Bruce begins to harbor romantic feelings for her, though he has not yet told her.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Raging Moon (1971)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Bryan Forbes had just been appointed head of EMI Films when he took on the film, writing and directing it himself while running the studio; he took no directing fee, saying he did it to keep the studio open and avoid wholesale redundancies among the permanent workforce.
- Bryan Forbes asked Paul McCartney to write a "sad song to play under the credits". McCartney started a song called "So Sad", which later became "Another Day", but after a July 1970 test screening he decided it was not suitable for the soundtrack and it was dropped.
- Shelagh Delaney, who wrote the first script, left the production after a dispute with Bryan Forbes, saying he had made considerable changes to her work, and had her name removed from the credits.
- EMI executives disliked the finished film and did not want it released; Forbes persuaded them to attend a second screening with an invited audience, and the good reaction secured the company's support.
- Academy Award winner Gary Oldman chose to become an actor after watching the film, particularly because of Malcolm McDowell's performance.
- The film was based on a novel by Peter Marshall, who himself contracted polio at eighteen and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair.
- Don Rugoff, who bought the film for US distribution, paid for a new Burt Bacharach theme song, which necessitated a change of title.
- Nanette Newman recalled that everyone took a cut in salary on the small-budget shoot, where there were no costumes and shots were grabbed as they went.
