Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Livestonth I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

JoeytheBrit This was one of the early British chase films which, along with A Daring Daylight Robbery, sparked a brief craze for chase films and inspired Edwin S. Porter to make The Great Train Robbery. For my money, Daylight Robbery is probably the more exciting of the two British films (but it's a close-run thing) but A Desperate Poching Affray is far more sophisticated in terms of film-making technique. It's also an early use of realistic violence with gun-play and fist-fights throughout. No doubt it would have appealed to its working class target audience who frequented the travelling fairground exhibitions of William Haggar and his sons. This one is definitely worth a look.

bob the moo I watched this film on a DVD that was rammed with short films from the period. I didn't watch all of them as the main problem with these type of things that their value is more in their historical novelty value rather than entertainment. So to watch them you do need to be put in the correct context so that you can keep this in mind and not watch it with modern eyes. With the Primitives & Pioneers DVD collection though you get nothing to help you out, literally the films are played one after the other (the main menu option is "play all") for several hours. With this it is hard to understand their relevance and as an educational tool it falls down as it leaves the viewer to fend for themselves, which I'm sure is fine for some viewers but certainly not the majority. What it means is that the DVD saves you searching the web for the films individually by putting them all in one place – but that's about it.Two poachers are disturbed during their heinous crimes and make a break for it, closely pursued by the police and aggrieved farmers. Similar to Daring Daylight Robbery this film is a chase sequence between criminals and police. In some ways it is not as good but in others it is more memorable. Technically and viewing-wise I preferred Daylight Robbery as it had more grit to it and flowed better. Poaching is good as well but just not as good. Where it does stand out though is in the impact it has due to the level of violence in it. I have been watching lots of silent British shorts recently and this is the first one I have seen men shot dead – it is a violent and sudden death and the film kicks the audience with several of them.I cannot imagine how the audience reacted to this but I'm guessing it was impacting in the extreme. For this and the thrill of the chase it is worth seeing.

peterjohnyorke "We believe that "The Poachers" (as the film was known by the Haggar family and in the USA)"was the first chase film" ("World's Fair", August 1914). US Film historians have commented that "The Poachers helped to set the pattern for subsequent chase films in the USA". The film sold 470 copies - more than any other film on record. It was made with a tame rabbit and a coconut-shy net,on the hills above the Rhondda Valley, according to Walter Haggar,who took part in it as one of the gamekeepers. Gaumont-British marketed in for over a year: it is in their catalogues from June 1903 to July 1904.For more details, see my book, "William Haggar, fairground film-maker", to be published by Accent Press Ltd. in May 2007, and visit www.williamhaggar.co.uk"Planktonrules'" comment of September 2006, it seems to me, is made with the benefit of far too much hindsight. William Haggar was quite isolated in South Wales, and may never have heard of Melies at the time when he made "Desperate Poaching Affray", which was, in any case, one of the longest British films when it was produced. This film was made principally for William's own fairground audience: he knew what they liked, and supplied it. "Anything good was marketed" commented his son Walter, and "The Poachers" (as it was renamed for selling in the USA) was so good that it sold 480 copies worldwide, more than any other recorded film.

Alice Liddel Unlikely as it might seem, this knockabout farmyard shootout is a precursor to the forbiddingly austere cinema of Robert Bresson - in its use of non-professional actors; and in its opening poaching scene, repeated in the master's 'Mouchette'. And, although this marvellous film is full of vivid action, brutal fisticuffs, fiery shootouts, and pond dunkings, with the breathless cast effectively tumbling the audience into the drama by hurling themselves in our direction, its vision of rural life is as bleak as Bresson's, an anti-pastoral in which the immemorial, supposedly natural and calm countryside becomes a frightening labyrinth of violence, power and murder.The film shows how a couple of harmless poachers are turned by circumstance into killers, a circumstance needlessly engineered by the forces of reaction. The boys only want to steal a bit of grub, it's not as if the landlord would miss it; but the minute they step onto his land, they are chased by class-traitor labourers and then the police. it would be wrong to call this Kafkaesque - they are clearly guilty - but this proliferation of law-defenders is nightmarish. They manage to use their ironically superior knowledge of someone else's land to evade capture; but eventually, like the Soviets at Stalingrad, sheer, faceless numbers win through. The momentum of the action, the harsh vibrancy of the sun-whipped landscape, and the gusto of the actors all create a sense of fun and exhiliration that is at the same time harrowing.It would be pompous to ascribe social critique to such a venture, but there is something very, very wrong about the propertied classes and their stoolies here.