Cornel Wilde wasn’t much of an actor but he thrived within his limitations and branched out into directing for a surprisingly large number of films, of which this is probably the most famous. It has a great premise – Wilde is a Great White Hunter in Africa leading a safari which is attacked by a local tribe.The Africans here are mainly portrayed as screaming savages, but not without emotion (for instance, there are scenes where they grieve after the death of their friends) and certainly with a lot of ingenuity when it comes to thinking up punishments: members of Wilde’s safari are decapitated, put in a pit with a venomous snake, bound and tied and stabbed to death, covered in mud and cooked over an open fire.
Since Wilde has been established as morally superior to the others – well, to the guy who paid for the safari anyway (he wants Wilde to join him in the slave trade, shoots elephants that don’t have ivory and won’t agree to pay off the local tribe) – so he isn’t killed straight away; instead the Africans strip him naked, give him a head start, then chase after him.
This is an intriguing step up and I was interested to see how the writers (who were nominated for an Oscar) dealt with this situation. How did they come up with 60 minutes of story without having Wilde just run, then stop and fight, then run again?
Well, the answer is they didn’t, really: for most of the time Wilde runs, then stops and fights, then runs again. He does vary how he stops and fights, though: one time he gets lucky and dodges and spear, another time he lays a trap, another he sets fire to the bush, etc. And towards the end there’s a sequence where Wilde saves an African boy from black slavers (“See!” says this film shot in apartheid South Africa, “Whites might not be perfect but they’re not as bad as blacks!”) and hangs out with him for a bit.
Still, it’s a pretty gripping adventure tale which doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to savagery, whether white or black (even good guy Wilde still blows away a fair amount of elephants), and is quite exciting. All the tortures, etc feel authentic – Wilde even runs the first bit really naked (well, in long shot wearing skin coloured underpants) – he later puts on a lap lap to enable things to be easier censor-wise. It’s a real rough and tough film and deserves to have become a cult classic.
NB Some critics have drawn attention to the fact that it is unrealistic Wilde can take on all these local Africans and beat them in their own backyard, and maybe it is – but Wilde is a hunter and in very good shape… and why would we assume these Africans are decent fighters in the first place? Maybe they’re from a wimpy tribe, or are just a bunch of losers. I’m sure they had them in Africa.
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