Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (Blu-ray Review)
- Review Date: Apr 23, 2025
- Format: Blu-ray Disc
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Director
Waris HusseinRelease Date(s)
1970 (March 11, 2025)Studio(s)
UMC Pictures (VCI Entertainment)- Film/Program Grade: B+
- Video Grade: A-
- Audio Grade: B+
- Extras Grade: B-
Review
Something of a lost Gene Wilder movie, Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970) was a relatively low-budget ($850,000) feature from a minor company, UMC Pictures, which distributed less than 20 films during the early-‘70s before sputtering out. It appears that the rights to these films mostly reverted back to their original production companies over time, making this mild comedy-drama more difficult to see than most.
It’s kind of a missing link between the earlier French comedies of Pierre Étaix and the later quirky Scottish comedies of Bill Forsyth. Quackser Fortune casts Wilder as Aloysius “Quackser” Fortune, an illiterate, working-class Dubliner living at home with his parents and sisters in the poorest section of Dublin, Quackser’s father employed at the foundry mere steps away, at the end of the street. Quackser makes a meager but seemingly happy living scooping up horse manure from Dublin’s horse-drawn milk carts, reselling it as fertilizer to local women for their gardens.
Plying his trade, he encounters Zazel Pierce (Margot Kidder), a rich, typically Kidderian kooky American student from Connecticut studying at Trinity College. She finds herself strangely attracted to the eccentric manure man, who knows less about Dublin than she does. He had been having a loveless affair with amorous housewife Betsy (Eileen Colgan) but soon falls in love with Zazel, though class issues, particularly from her cruel, snobbish classmates, threaten the relationship. Moreover, Quackser’s life is upended when the horse-driven milk carts are replaced by modern delivery trucks.
Not exactly a romantic comedy, this slight film is more a study of Wilder’s Chaplinesque character, but it does have modest charms and offers a few surprises. It’s a little disorienting seeing Wilder play a low-key, working-class Irishman. His Dubliner accent is impressively credible, but maybe his determination to get that right got in the way of his performance a little; Quackser is an interesting, elfin kind of character, but lacking for the most part the kind of Wilder screen persona then blooming in other films from this time.
Kidder, just 21, is luminous and adorable, however, and the mostly unfamiliar Irish cast is good. Eileen Colgan worked mostly in Irish theater and television; she didn’t make another film until My Left Foot but then was busy until her death with roles in movies like Far and Away and Angela’s Ashes. The only other actor I recognized was David Kelly as Tom Maguire, one of Quackser’s pub mates. He had a long career in British and Irish films and TV, gaining prominence later in life in movies like Waking Ned Devine and as Grampa Joe in the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which, of course, was a remake of Wilder’s signature film.
The project was developed by Wilder and Sidney Glazier, who produced Mel Brooks’s The Producers, Wilder initially hoping to persuade Jean Renoir to direct it. Renoir was enthusiastic but not immediately available, so they turned to Waris Hussein, primarily a BBC television director with an impressive resume, including a TV version of A Passage to India and later projects including Henry VIII and His Six Wives and Edward and Mrs. Simpson. (He also directed many early episodes of Doctor Who, including the very first serial, An Unearthly Child.)
Hussein’s direction contributes to the delicate performances by the two leads, each character attracted, bemused, and frustrated by the other. One thing I certainly didn’t expect was the film’s surprisingly and comparatively explicit lovemaking scene, Kidder very sexy. The picture also provides a fascinating glimpse of Dublin at the end of the ‘60s. As Wilder later noted in his biography, while the film was shot in Dublin’s poorest neighborhood, the tiny tract brick houses and the streets they line were kept immaculately clean by its residents. In one scene Quackser waits for Zazel in front of the Ambassador Theatre, a cinema since 1897 (!) at the time exhibiting the movie musical Oliver!, with a huge display out front (touting Panavision 70, no less).
Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx comes to Blu-ray via budget label VCI. The packaging alarmingly lists a 1.33:1 aspect ratio but this is incorrect; it’s presented in its correct 1.66:1 widescreen. The transfer is generally good, with no signs of damage or the kind of digital “fixes” VCI seems enamored of with some of their other releases. The Dolby Digital 2.0 (mono) audio is much less impressive, though part of the blame is the original production recording and mixing, on noisy Dublin streets and cacophonous real interiors. Optional English subtitles (very helpful in this case) are provided on this Region-Free disc.
Extras consist of an audio commentary by Robert Kelly, who quotes extensively from Wilder’s autobiography, and a “reconstructed” trailer that uses the original narration (supposedly from that cousin in the Bronx) but which is basically textless, as it uses footage from the video master.
Quacker is a modest little gem of a movie, not exactly what one might have expected from Wilder but worthwhile and recommended.
- Stuart Galbraith IV