Cy Endfield and Stanley Baker earned a lot of brownie points with Zulu, many of which they blew on this film, their next one together (and, as it turned out, last). The behind the scenes story of the film – George Peppard left during filming, Enfield was almost killed in an accident and fell out with the crew – is more interesting than what’s on screen, which is another crashed-plane-in-the-desert story (coming out the same year as Flight of the Phoenix).
I’d been led to believe that baboons played a bigger part in the story than they turned out to – at first I thought “baboons, how weird” but there’s not a lot of baboon stuff and in fact more baboons would have made the film a bit more interesting. Instead you’ve got Stuart Whitman running around in shorts going a bit bonkers, awful scenes where Susannah York throws herself at Whitman (“do you love me”), Stanley Baker’s undeveloped role.
There’s a decent cast, an exciting plane crash, splendid locations, and a fascinating finale with Whitman taking on a baboon then the baboons going in for the kill. But you can’t help wish Baker and Endfield had adapted Wilbur Smith’s When the Lion Feeds, like they were going to.
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