The third collaboration between Chips Rafferty and Lee Robinson was their biggest financial success - mostly due, one can't help thinking, to the location photography of Papua New Guinea: the beautiful rivers, trees and valleys, colourful locals, and genuine sense of "another world". It probably also helped to have a star performer in Chips Rafferty and some French beauty in Francoise Christophe.
Chips plays an Aussie district officer who is about to go on leave when told by the government to cancel and do some work - Reg Lye has discovered oil and the government needs to peg out the area. This instantly marks the film as different from American adventure films set in exotic corners of the globe - the hero is a public servant, working for the government, trying to minimise exploitation; there's no personal stake, such as greed or revenge - he's an honest man trying to do his job. In this respect the film has more in common with British imperial flicks such as Sanders of the River (another film about a public servant who was called back on leave and whinged about it) - and the positive depiction of Australian colonialism presumably ensured its official co operation.
Because Rafferty was too old to romance Christophe, they throw in a love interest - a crocodile hunter who has been dubbed into Australian. Lye provides the comic relief. In actual fact the story could have used a bit more excitement - a traitor on the mission, some sexy love sequences or something. There is a bit of "we shouldn't bring a woman along on this mission" but it feels tired.
There is plenty of colour and its politically and sociologically fascinating. PNG is very much depicted as the third world with Australia running the place with a very paternal hand.
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