Le Rebelle de Kandahar

An interesting little Hammer offering story wise. You'd think the red coats of the British Army would be the heroes of this Raj story set in 1850. But as it turns out in a welcome twist, they're more the villains, doing the colonial nasty on the local tribespeople, made up generally of black-faced English actors.

Had to laugh at the indignant shock of a couple of reviewers here expressing amazement that more Indians didn't feature in the cast. This is a Hammer production made in around 1964/65 and as such was made on the smell of an oily rag in England. For goodness sake, check out those vintage painted back drops of the castle in the mountains. There is absolutely no Indian location footage and in fact, footage was "borrowed" from a couple of other films to round out the battle scenes. Before we get all lathered up about the casting in a 55 year old "B" grade supporting feature, let's also remember that a bare 3 years before, it was perfectly acceptable for Alec Guinness to play an Arab in Lawrence of Arabia. In fact a couple of years after this, Lawrence Olivier played the Mahdi in Khartoum with little criticism.

As mentioned the only really stand-out feature of this film was the anti-colonial perspective of the British Raj. The villains of the piece were the senior British Officers who fitted up a fellow officer Case for a court-martial, because besides supposedly having "a touch of the tar brush", he had also had an affair with another officer's wife. He ends up running with the local rebel alliance, though their leader, Eli Khan (an hilariously black-faced Oliver Reed), is also depicted as being somewhat cruel and untrustworthy.

It all ends up in a gloriously romantic tragedy of near -Shakespearean proportions, as bodies litter a paper-mache cave hideout and accusing fingers are afterwards pointing in the British establishment direction. Cue the casting credits for this little oddity. I'm sure the production only ever had pretensions to being a support feature, but I give it a 5 for trying something a little different with the story line.

Now, in 2024, we often forget that the UK film industry gave us many adventure movies in the fifties and sixties, at the scale of many Hollywood films, with as much budget, actors, directing skills. It was during an era when UK still had many colonies around the world; it was the opposite to the social tendancies that this movie industry will show us during the same period. And which begun in the forties, just after WW2 and for instance London after the Blitz,, among ruins. The roots of the kitchen sink tradition of the British cinema. Now,, concerning this John Gilling's film, I was so amazed by the quality. I often counfound this film with BANDIT OF ZHOBE, same director, also an adventure film, but with Victor Mature instead of Ron Lewis. We have here the proof that director John Gilling was not only an excellent thriller and crime director and also a terrific horrorr provider - SHADOW OF THE CAT, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES - but also a little genius in terms of adventure flicks: FURY AT SMUGGLER'S BAY, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER...Do not miss them because they are "just" British.

After watching TBoK for some thirty minutes, this started to remind me of a Hammer film, my having missed the reference to Hammer in the opening credits.

Other reviewers have noted its shortcomings, such as uniforms that would not have kept their brightness for very long, artificial-looking studio sets and Ronald Lewis's unremarkable performance - certainly he's no Tyrone Power, who played a similar role - of a mixed-race officer - in "King of the Khyber Rifles".

To which might be added: easily-reloadable rifles used by both sides that were not produced in 1850 and the risible scenes of key characters bouncing along, ostensibly on horses, against back projection as they led their men into battle.

The English countryside served well enough for India for most, if not all, of the film, and, dare I say it in 2022, so did the blacked-up "Indians".

At least the ending was a bit of a surprise, not least because of the hundreds of men that suddenly appeared in a film that up to then had only featured a score or so at any one time. Now I know that scenes were lifted from "Zarak", I plan to watch that film to see how many.

Worth a little more than the 5.4 average rating. I thought.

Even those with a fondness for those "Northwest Frontier" movies set in the British Raj of the 1800's will probably be disappointed by this minor, unpersuasive, and somewhat uncharacteristic entry from Hammer Films. The costumes have that clean, new look -- as if they just came from a rental shop -- and the handful of sets are too tidy and well-lit to be anything other than studio creations. Even the rocks have a fiberglass look.

More troubling than the film's skimpy budget, however, is the casting of its main character. He's supposed to be half-English, half-Indian -- one of those chaps who's worked his way up in the ranks of the British Army but who feels he's still regarded with hostility and suspicion by his colleagues. Not only does Ronald Lewis lack the face for this part, (there's nothing at all Indian about him), but he's also short of the darkly-compelling charisma which might make this character "work." He comes across as a provincial English actor who's dressed up in left-over garb from a production of "Kismet." In his defense, however, it must be said that the script gives him little to work with since his character is poorly developed and too often seems simply like the victim of events going on around him.

Oliver Reed might have been a better choice for the lead but here he plays the villain -- a rebellious chieftain who's said to be "half-mad." Unfortunately, this gives him license to indulge in some theatrical behavior which is more embarrassing than enlivening.

At one point a captured British soldier is whipped by the rebels but even this sure-fire scene is too poorly staged to arouse much interest. (Why didn't the rebels tear the soldier's shirt all the way off? Didn't they take Flogging 101?)

Had too stop watching this movie as it's set in India, but contains no Indian actors or actresses. What a disgrace!