Östlich vom Sudan

A grand old slice of stiff-upper-lipped adventure, set during the glory days of the British Empire. The first thing noticeable about EAST OF SUDAN is the cheapness of its production – this is one of those films that relies heavily on stock footage and footage borrowed from other films, most notably the 1939 version of THE FOUR FEATHERS. The 'new' scenes, building a framework of narrative around these borrowed set-pieces, are clearly shot on a studio backlot at Shepperton and never have more than a few actors on screen at the same time.

As for the story – don't go looking for one, and you won't be disappointed. Burly soldier Baker (Anthony Quayle, today forgotten but then riding high on a number of successes) escapes from a city besieged by the Mahdi's forces and finds himself travelling the Nile with a disparate group of survivors. There's the lovely Sylvia Sims, playing one of those dated parts - a feisty, independent woman who nonetheless ends up a damsel in distress during key sequences and keeps having to be rescued and carried away by the men. Derek Fowlds, better known for his television work in YES, PRIME MINISTER and HEARTBEAT in later years, is fairly bland as a nondescript soldier but a youthful Jenny Agutter, swathed within an ill-fitting black wig, shows glimpses of her star presence as an orphaned child.

All of the clichés of this era are present and correct – stock footage crocodiles, rhinos, elephants, and copious back projection. None of it is remotely convincing, and nor are the climactic siege sequences set in Khartoum, where footage from THE FOUR FEATHERS pretty much takes over the film. Such moments are, however, highly amusing. EAST OF SUDAN's one saving grace is the presence of director Nathan Juran, formerly of JACK THE GIANT KILLER. Juran is one of my favourite directors – his movies were inevitably colourful romps (even the black and white ones!) and this is no exception. There's something resolutely old-fashioned and thrilling about the tough characters and survival scenarios, and if you take the dated scenes involving angry natives with a pinch of salt you might just find yourself enjoying it.

Derring-do in the desert, re-teaming Anthony Quale and Sylvia Sims, who previously appeared together trekking across the desert in "Ice Cold in Alex" (1958). Along for the ride are Derek Fowlds (from "Yes Minister") and a young Jenny Agutter, whom viewers may remember from "Logan's Run" (1976). This time, however, instead of trying to stay one jump ahead of "Jerry" in the Western Desert, Tony and Sylvie are on the run from Dervishes, Arab slavers and Fuzzy-Wuzzies in 1880's Sudan.

Most of the action sequences are lifted straight out of the 1939 film version of "The Four Feathers." However, that is not a bad thing, since "The Four Feathers" was one of the greatest action-adventure films ever produced and, unlike the dreadful 2002 remake, actually was filmed entirely on location in the Sudan, something which would be impossible today.

Anthony Quale plays an experienced British "Squaddie" trying to escape to Khartoum after his entire unit has gotten the chop. En route he falls in with a green young Lieutenant (Fowlds) along with a prudish British governess (Sims) and her Egyptian charge played by young Jenny Agutter in her first film role. Quale quickly demonstrates that he is the only one of the mismatched group who is able to distinguish his sphincter from his medial brachial joint. However, his principal difficulty is in persuading his upper-class companions to accept the leadership of a mere "prole". This film may not quite be up to the quality of "The Four Feathers", nor even of "Ice Cold in Alex", but it is an entertaining journey nonetheless.

A couple of years before KARTHOUM, this good small budget British adventure yarn is very agreeable, as also was FLIGHT OF THE LOST BALOON, SIEGE OF THE SAXONS from the same director Nathan Juran, an American film maker. The mid sixties will be the moment where UK film industry will definitely stop their production of adventure movies, which was a testimony, a mark, of the colonialist past, history of England, the widest empire in the world, all over the planet. The end of British colonialism will also provoke the collapse of the British adventure film genre. It will be replaced by the social "kitchen sink" mode, with directors succh as John Schlesinger, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson.... So this very one is pretty enjoyable to watch, but light hearted, for the whole family. However, I highly prefer the awesome KARTHOUM, directed by Basil Dearden. Far darker, violent, much much more powerful.

A very poor man's 'African Queen' that must have seemed old-fashioned in it's patronising treatment of the natives even when it was originally made. Dashed off in three weeks at Shepperton by producer Charles Schneer and director Nathan Juran for the bottom half of a double bill with their main feature 'First Men in the Moon', it has the vices of Schneer's films with Ray Harryhausen enumerated by the late Bill Warren as "underfinancing, pandering to the 'appropriate' audience, a slightly cheesy air" all present and correct (plus a truly awful score by Laurie Johnson) without the redeeming input by Harryhausen himself.

Fortunately, more by luck than judgement Schneer has gathered together an extremely attractive quartet of actors, including an unrecognisable 11 year-old Jenny Agutter as a blue-eyed Indian princess (initially taken for a boy by Anthony Quayle when he first meets her), while director Juran keeps the camera on the move during the hilarious studio exteriors that resemble something out of 'Ripping Yarns' on to which they have been corralled and into which colour footage has been spliced from 'The Four Feathers' and various fifties jungle pictures.

Adventure set in Sudan in the 1880s where the British are fighting the Mahdi forces attempting to end the slave trade.

With Khartoum under siege, two British soldiers help a governess and her charge to safety. On their adventurous journey down the river Nile, they encounter wild animals, native tribes and even romance.

The stock footages and the fact it was shot in a studio is obvious, but it's not a boring film. It's an old-fashioned adventure film that invokes the child in us. Plus it's got the underrated Anthony Quayle who stars in a role that would've been tailor made for Stewart Granger. Nice action sequences rounds up this colourful romp that Nathan Juran knows how to make.