Villain is a 1971 British gangster film directed by Michael Tuchner and starring Richard Burton, Ian McShane, Nigel Davenport and Donald Sinden.

Minor underworld figure Wolfe supplies girls to an aristocrat who hosts sex parties at his mansion and deals in drugs.

They worked from a treatment by American actor Al Lettieri, renowned for his tough-guy image in films such as The Godfather (1972) and The Getaway (1972) as well as for his real-life associations with the New York Gambino Family.

Clement and La Frenais based their screenplay on Burden of Proof, a novel by James Barlow[5] that the Chicago Tribune had called a "sizzling, compelling book.

Though several of the main characters and important situations carry over from the novel, Clement and La Frenais altered the plot considerably.

I play a cockney gangland leader who is very much a mother's boy and takes her to Southend and buys her whelks etc but in the Smoke am a ruthless fiend incarnate but homosexual as well.

[7]Burton normally earned $1,000,000 per film but agreed to make Villain for no salary in exchange for a larger percentage of the profits.

"These are the times of economies for everyone making pictures," said Burton, "And actually working this way – if you can afford it and don't mind waiting for your money – is far more exciting for the actor.

"[4] Burton admitted that he had always wanted to play a gangster, having long admired Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart: "I suppose like the fat man who would have loved to be a ballet dancer.

Exteriors were shot on location in areas of London (including the Winstanley and York Road Estates), Brighton, Bedford and Bracknell.

[12] On 30 May 1971, Burton wrote in his diary that Villain was "... a goodish film but so far isn't doing very well in the States but has not yet opened in Britain and the Commonwealth where it should do better.

I know it is cockney and therefore difficult for Yanks to follow but one would have thought the critics to be of sufficiently wide education to take it in their stride.

[14]The film received generally unfavourable reviews, possibly because it was seen as a veiled portrait of the Kray twins, who had been jailed for life in March 1969.

The story ... is tidily plotted; the locations are functional; the bad characters are human enough to elicit sympathy at their downfall; and the film whirrs smoothly into top gear for its last-ditch climax, complete with curtain line.

The performances are uniformly good; the screenplay, by Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement, is witty and laconic; and Michael Tuchner’s direction is thoroughly efficient, with the robbery itself and the bungled getaway brilliantly staged.

"[17] In Wales and Cinema: the First Hundred Years, Peter Waymark described it as a "disappointingly histrionic London gangster movie.