'I've come for you Margaret' - Get Carter (1971) Discussion

I think he let her keep them on so that she knew that she wasn't going to get raped.

"You paid for parking? For me?"

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Might be true from a in-movie/script reason. But I think the real reason she kept her panties on in that scene was so they didn't accidentally show her snatch and could keep the scene without redoing it or editing it which would have lost its "power".

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[–] cuirophile 12 years ago

Poor Margaret, I think she hopes on hope that the "worst" Carter is going to do is to rape (and not kill) her. She knows she's had it when he tells her to keep the panties on. She looked great in that PVC coat and imitation leather skirt though!

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[–] finnegansword-772-990306 12 years ago

"She looked great in that PVC coat and imitation leather skirt though!"

***

And once a week she liked a gentleman - a good line for Carter, I thought.

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[–] g-of-warks2-1 12 years ago

Well said all of you. Glad to see that it is not just me who thought what he did to Margaret was particularly sadistic and nasty. I got the impression that she thought that if she cooperated with Carter she would at least get out of it alive. I thought that it was particularly nasty the cool, almost casual way, that he murders her. This is made worse when you realise that one of the reasons that he murders her is just to drop Kinnear in the crap with the police. Any sympathy that I had with him evaporated after this. Glad that he got shot in the end.

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[–] Riding46 12 years ago

Agreed, it was one of the most sadistic scenes I've ever seen in cinema, far worse than anything the Nick Nolte character does in Mulholland Falls.

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[–] Low-Blow-Ho 11 years ago

It was dreadful! it left scars that have since healed, but no doubt traumatising!

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[–] cjbussey81 12 years ago

He had more than one reason to do her in. First, she was involved with the porn film Doreen was coerced into. Strike one. Then she told Gerald and Sid's goons he would meet her on the bridge, where they showed up to attempt his capture. Strike two. In the end, he just believed that she was a trashy little whore who'd been part of his family's being fvcked over and presented the perfect opportunity to frame kinnear up in the process. Yes, his killing of her was brutal and cold, but she deserved it. You don't piss off Jack Carter and live to brag about it.

"I can't keep doing this on my own. With these . . .people."

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[–] g-of-warks2-1 12 years ago

I agree with you in that she was not a very nice person who had caused his family a lot of undeserved grief. So I think that Carter was quite entitled to get his own back. Such as informing the police (which he did when he sent that film to Scotland Yard)and dropping her in the crap with them. However I still think that she did not deserve to be murdered. Think the moral of the story is do not get involved with the underworld in the first place! As you say their vengeance tends to be somewhat over the top.

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[–] ohhmyy 12 years ago

Just saw this on TCM with Anthony Bourdain presenting it as one of his personal favorites - an interesting film.
Carter was already an intensely violent man on a mission of vengeance over his brother's death to begin with;
seeing the porn film of his niece sent him over the edge into a frenzy. After the funeral he had asked whether
Margaret would be looking after his niece now that his brother was gone; Carter seemed to feel that she and his
niece got along well and that Margaret functioned - if not as a mother - at least as an older, protective sister
to the young girl. The realization that Margaret had in fact drawn his niece into the world of snuff porn, which
in turn led directly to his brother's murder, and tried to set Carter up for an ambush at the bridge rendezvous
was one betrayal too many for him. It's also alluded to that he may in fact be the young girls father; a sense
of guilt over the long ago betrayal of his own brother and his failure to look after what might have been his
own daughter fueled a seething rage in Carter that left no room for mercy, pity, or forgiveness - his vengeance
was fueled both by the actions of those who had harmed his family and by his own creeping suspicion that he had
failed to look after them himself, with devastating consequences. In that light it seems only proper that
Carter's life too is forfeit in the end - everyone shares some guilt, and they all come to ruin. A dark and
provocative tale, and the kind of gritty, morally ambiguous film you don't see made anymore....

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[–] dwillsxbr 12 years ago

Anthony Bourdain on TCM gave this film such a big review I was expecting something out of this world and I barley made it past the first hour. What a bore fest the first half was. I don't think there was any action until the 50 min point. It would have been better if TCM had just done their usual short send off. Anthony Bourdain meant well but damn I was like what movie was he talking about and the bad guys are all so well behaved and spoken.

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[–] PhoenixNails 8 years ago

"No action until the 50 min point"

Bwahahahaha....

Yep. You enjoy those action-packed Fast & Furious, Transformers, GI Joe, etc.

Leave the taught, deep, suspenseful classic film noirs to thinking people who appreciate them.

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[–] patpatterson 12 years ago

"He had more than one reason to do her in. First, she was involved with the porn film Doreen was coerced into. Strike one".

So was Glenda but she only got a beating from Carter iirc.Anyway unless she forced Doreen into doing the film she didn't deserve to die for just being involved in the film.

"Then she told Gerald and Sid's goons he would meet her on the bridge, where they showed up to attempt his capture. Strike two".

Most likely she was being coerced into cooperating with them.Carter doesn't seem to make any allowance for this.

"Yes, his killing of her was brutal and cold, but she deserved it."

I don't think the reasons you have given are strong enough to say she deserved to die.She was just a hooker at the end of the day and not a sinister gangster.And you and others have pointed out Carter may have killed her just to try and frame Kinnear so he probably didn't care whether she deserved it or not and that makes him a scumbag.

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[–] g-of-warks2-1 12 years ago

Well said.

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[–] carthur27 12 years ago

"So was Glenda but she only got a beating from Carter iirc.Anyway unless she forced Doreen into doing the film she didn't deserve to die for just being involved in the film."

Didn't Jack Carter lock Glenda in the boot of the car which was knocked off the docks by his adversaries into the water where she presumably drowns? If so, circumstances led to her death before we find-out what Carter ultimately planned for Glenda.

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[–] jh66 12 years ago

Margaret was a cheap slag co-starring in seedy porn flicks and screwing Frank Carter behind her hubby's back and flitting from fella to fella. She even said defensively on the Iron Bridge to a mocking Carter "Look, I can't help what I am".

She knew that Jack knew her role in the death of Frank, and knew that she was a dead whore along with many others.

Demeaning and killing everyone was Jack's sarcastic (and psychotic) way of pissing on the town he hated coming back to ("This stinking craphouse").

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[–] PhoenixNails 8 years ago

He killed Glenda too. She drowned in the car trunk.

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[–] rochelle-rochelle 11 years ago

I hated the margaret death scene. He could have traced the murder back to that guy without leaving a trail of clothes. I hated that she had to strip and him saying "keep your pants on" just creeped me out. Why didn't he just shoot her? Why go to the trouble of getting a drug to inject in her? It was a bit overplayed and overdramatic. I can't watch that scene. It just seems too real.

Randy lay there like a slug. It was his only defense.

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[–] Riding46 11 years ago

It was viscious allright. It was a very nasty film, very British in that it was the world of Raymond Chandler only with more sex, violence and sadism.

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[–] blufftoni 11 years ago

Shooting her wouldn't have allowed Carter to be able to frame Kinnear as being involved in her death.

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[–] corriganville 10 years ago

Was Margaret actually one of the women in the movie? I recognized Doreen but couldn't make out who the other two were.

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[–] jh66 10 years ago

She kept her pants on because of the censors of the time not allowing anything too explicit?

Otherwise, her total nudity would have fitted in with the gangbangs and porn films at Kinnear's house.

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[–] Kawada_Kira 10 years ago

That was a pretty dark and brutal scene. I hadn't known though, until reading this thread, that Margaret had been in the porn film. I hadn't recognized her in it. So when I watched the movie, I thought he was just using her as a sacrifice even though she wasn't involved at all, just to be able to get Kinnear into more prison time. But I get now that he did it because she had gotten his niece/possible daughter into that porn film, when he had originally thought of her as being a sort of mother/older sister figure to Doreen, who should have been protecting her. Obviously he would have felt betrayed and even more furious than he already was, which explains why he did what he did. Still dark and sadistic, but more understandable than I had originally thought it was.

"The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor."
- Voltaire

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[–] activista 9 years ago

I like the film (even though it is sexist,violent as hell,even for a 70's film) but,yeah, that scene was out cold and dark and brutal, just like the rest of the film. And, yeah, Carter was one mean cold-blooded son-of-a-b****----all that destruction he sowed came back to bite him in the end.

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[–] parknourie 8 years ago

That really was something to behold.
I'm not sure if there was film with a scene to such degree before this.
It was really cold and awful and yet the audience feels that justice is being served.

Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down and a Wagging Finger of Shame

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[–] ecarle (14979) 6 years ago

Ironically, in 1971, the year that Get Carter was released, Michael Caine was approached by Alfred Hitchcock to play the psycho villain in "Frenzy,"(released in 1972) -- a sexual maniac who first rapes his female victims, and then strangles them with a necktie. In one of his autobios, Caine wrote that he turned Hitchcock down "because I didn't want to be associated with the part."

There is one graphic rape and strangling in Frenzy, but I tell you, it doesn't play that much different from what Caine does to the woman in THIS scene.

I can only expect that Caine felt his gangster was the "anti-hero" of Get Carter(killing men AND women "on a revenge mission") and he doesn't rape the woman before killing her in this scene.

But I tell you: I can EASILY see Michael Caine playing the rapist-strangler in Frenzy on the basis of this woman-killing scene in Get Carter(as well as in his treatment of this woman earlier by slapping her and threatening her with death -- as well as his manhandling of the hooker in a bathtub that indirectly leads to HER death.)

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