Four years after their conviction, Luvaglio and Stafford found themselves in front of the Court of Appeals, maintaining their innocence and denouncing police corruption. This appeal however, would be unsuccessful. Meanwhile in British cinema, the 1971 gangster picture ”Get Carter,” starring Michael Caine and set in and around Newcastle and County Durham (where the killing took place), would be released to the public, courting controversy and sparking a debate about violence in working-class areas.
While the relationship between movies and real-life violence has always been complex and contentious, a debate that may seem banal to us in the 21st century, one must consider the context in which the British public interpreted and took to heart the violence of these late 1960s gangster films.
The gritty realism of “Get Carter” and unflinching depiction of working-class violence would have undoubtedly shocked many when it was released in the late 1960s, especially since its source material, the novel ”Jack’s Return Home,” was directly and openly inspired by The One-Armed-Bandit murder (via BBC). The debate surrounding this violence, as well as Northern England’s fears of a deadly criminal underground carrying up with the Northern winds to carve out new turf, would have played perfectly into the anxieties of many working-class viewers.
Stafford himself would allegedly tell Britain’s Daily Mail, “Michael Caine charging round on-screen blasting away with a shotgun hardly helped my case.” Caine himself admitted that his portrayal of a down-to-earth, albeit colder, gangster was intended to erase the cartoonish aspects of gangster characters at the time (via The Gentleman’s Journal).
It’s hard to believe that ”Get Carter” alone could have altered the public’s perception of ordinary working-class men, like Stafford and Luvaglio, being capable of murder. The reality of the situation is that Stafford’s bad reputation stems from a variety of other reasons.
