Where the Hell Do You Find a Print of This Thing Anyway?
If you're searching for Guy No More Mr Nice Guy, you are already running into the problem. The 1974 sex comedy directed by Jim Clark isn't exactly sitting on a streaming service near you. I spent about three years tracking down a actually watchable version. Let me save you some time. The film stars Bill McKinney as a mild-mannered guy who snaps and goes on a violent rampage. It was released during the brief window when American studios were making crude exploitation comedies before the VHS market swallowed everything. That means it exists in a legal gray area for most of its existence. Nobody is actively distributing it. Nobody is actively suppressing it either. That is the worst possible state for a film to be in.
What You Need to Know About Guy No More Mr Nice Guy Before You Search
First, the film has had multiple titles and cuts. The original theatrical release runs about 87 minutes. Some sources list it as 90. The difference is usually a few seconds of removed footage that surfaced on early VHS bootlegs. There is no definitive "director's cut." Jim Clark moved on to other projects and largely disowned the thing. That matters when you're evaluating what you find online. Second, and this is the part nobody warns you about, there are at least four different source elements floating around. A 35mm print from a regional theater run. A Video 2000 tape from the UK. A barebones US bootleg DVD that was actually shot from a VHS. And somewhere out there, a workprint that hasn't surfaced publicly. If you care about picture quality, this is the single most important detail.
How I Actually Watched It in Something Approaching Decent Quality
Here is what happened. I found a listing on eBay for a "rare VHS tape" of the film for $4.99. The seller had photographed the tape spine but not the label. I assumed it was yet another bootleg. I was wrong. The tape was actually a clean Video 2000 master that someone had transferred to VHS-C in the mid-1990s before the format died. The transfer was rough but the audio was intact and the picture had none of the generational loss you get from copying a bootleg off another bootleg. I transferred it myself using a JVC BR-S820U through a NewerTech Video Nexus into iMatch on my Mac. The resulting file was roughly 720x480 interlaced, 29.97 fps. It was not beautiful. But it was the cleanest version I have seen and it took me about two hours from unboxing to finished file. For most people, that level of effort is excessive. A better path is finding the Warner Archive home entertainment release, which exists as a manufacturing-on-demand DVD. Warner holds some rights through various acquisitions, and they put this out a few years back. It is still available through their website. The picture is compressed to hell but it is legit, it is continuous, and it arrived in about five days with no waiting for a third-party seller.
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Common Pitfalls When Hunting This Down
The biggest trap is YouTube. There are full uploads of the film on YouTube, usually taken down within hours. They tend to be rips from low-quality sources. I compared one such upload against the Warner Archive disc and the YouTube version was missing approximately four minutes of footage and the audio had noticeable hum and dropout. People will tell you YouTube is fine. It is not fine if you actually want to see the film. Another trap is IMVDb and similar archive sites. Someone uploaded a portion of a 35mm scan they claim is a "restoration." It is a restoration of nothing. The color grading is completely wrong. The skin tones look like someone ran the footage through a green filter. I watched about six minutes before I stopped. Do not trust any upload that claims to be a restored print unless the uploader can show frame-by-frame comparisons with source materials. The third trap is pricing. Full rare VHS copies of this film sell for anywhere from $25 to $150 on auction sites. Most of that is nonsense. The film was printed in bulk in the late 1970s and early 1980s for video rental stores. Physical copies are not actually rare. They are just inconvenient to find. If someone is asking more than $30 for a VHS, they are gambling on your desperation.
What the Film Actually Is, If You've Never Seen It
No More Mr Nice Guy is a low-budget exploitation comedy with a revenge plot. McKinney plays an office worker who is constantly taken advantage of by his colleagues, his girlfriend, and basically everyone he encounters. He finally snaps. The film becomes a series of increasingly absurd set pieces where he gets back at the people who wronged him. It is crude. It is not particularly funny. But it is a time capsule of early 1970s American sexual anxiety and the cultural moment when "nice guy" resentment became a recognizable trope. The film was almost lost. It was considered commercially failed at the time and sat in vaults for decades. Its revival came through the same underground cinephile networks that rescued countless other B-movies from obscurity. That history matters because it explains why the print quality situation is so fragmented. There was never a proper archival restoration. There was only slow, accidental preservation by people who found it interesting for the wrong reasons.
A Note on Where This Falls Short
I need to be straight about something. Even the best available version of Guy No More Mr Nice Guy is not a great viewing experience. The film itself is uneven. The performances are wooden. The direction is competent at best. What makes it worth tracking down is historical interest, not entertainment value. If you are looking for a good movie, go watch something else. If you are studying 1970s American exploitation cinema, or the cultural genealogy of the "nice guy" archetype that shows up everywhere from pickup artist forums to modern internet discourse, then this film is a primary source document. Treat it like one. The Warner Archive DVD remains the most accessible option. A well-maintained VHS from a reputable seller is the second best. Anything found randomly online should be treated as a curiosity, not a final source. I have watched this film roughly a dozen times across different transfers and I still recommend starting with the Warner release and only going further if you need to verify something about the content.
