Rivalen unter heißer Sonne

This is a clicked version of all the African adventure films that came out in the fifties.It might have had a chance with a youthful leading man.Robert Taylor looks an old man at 48 though it does not seem slightly risible to the writers that a romance with a 21 year old Anne Aubrey is somewhat unlikely.Well photographed scenery is about the only bright spot.Assuming it is not stock shots.

Robert Taylor is in Africa to build a railroad to Lake Tanganyika. Problems arise when a group of Germans also arrive to build a railroad and a local baddie decides to do what he can to sabotage Taylor's efforts.

"Killers of Kilamanjaro" is not a bad film at all. It has some handsome cinematography that is far better than the average Tarzan film. However, it also is amazingly ordinary despite this--and features characters that are pretty bland and one-dimensional.

You know the film will have problems when you see that Robert Taylor is cast in the lead. Now he was a fine actor and I like his films (that's why I watched it) BUT it's all about him trying to build a railroad for the British in Africa and Taylor is about as British as Bratwurst! This casting just didn't make sense to me--and I am sure the audiences felt the same. As for the rest, they weren't bad but had an amazing capacity for ordinariness--most likely because the script was just okay. Films like "King Solomon's Mines" (not the abomination with Richard Chamberlain) make this look pretty dull by comparison.

ROBERT TAYLOR nearing the end of his career was still making robust adventure films and fitting the roles as well as he did earlier in time. Here he's the safari leader assigned to building a railroad and dealing with treacherous convicts and restless natives while venturing to take a trip through dangerous Watusha territory.

There's plenty of colorful location scenery to create a vivid picture of the long trek and the usual number of obstacles thrown into his path before he and his group reach their destination. It's a story that borrows heavily from the outline of "King Solomon's Mines" without delving into the background of its characters but just directed in routine adventure style by director Richard Thorpe, who had once guided Taylor through several of his MGM films in the old days.

ANTHONY NEWLEY lends breezy support as Taylor's bumbling assistant but the accent is not on the supporting cast of humans but the many African animals that are viewed along the way. Along for the search for her father is pretty ANNE AUBREY in a purely decorative role.

Summing up: Routine safari adventure is enhanced by some handsome location photography and the many wild animals spotted during the trek.

It's an hybrid of many things, this - and all set in the not very politically correct scenario of late 19th century colonial Africa. Robert Taylor is "Adamson" - a railway engineer tasked with completing a dangerous stretch of track between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. No mean feat as he must face duplicity from some, slave-trading, locals with vested interests and some hostility from the natives whose land he must cross. Adding to his difficulties, he is engaged by "Jane" (a pretty unremarkable Anne Aubrey) to try to track down her engineer brother - a man charged with the same task earlier, but who has disappeared. It's a solid boy's own adventure story this with plenty of stereotypes of the time peppering a tale that has little jeopardy but just enough action and beasties to sustain it for ninety minutes. The one thing I did struggle with was the curious casting of Anthony Newley as his assistant "Hooky" but otherwise this is just a sort of "King Solomon's Mines" meets "Northwest Frontier" type of film that lauded the pioneering spirit of empire at a time when that's what cinema audiences wanted. It's entirely forgettable fayre, and very much of a time long gone - in just about every fashion.

Rather than the misleading title, the name on the credits as director of the reliably uninspired Richard Thorpe warns you what to expect from this lacklustre copy of 'King Solomon's Mines' with regular cuts away to travelogue shots of zebras, giraffes, crocodiles and so on.

Poor Earl Cameron is required to wear feathers and bones as a witch doctor. But Anthony Newley's 'funny' Englishman is if anything equally demeaning, and Robert Taylor's condescending treatment of him endears you to neither.