Con la bava alla bocca

"Albino" is a movie made in Rhodesia four years before the nation became independent and was renamed 'Zimbabwe'. It's not surprising that the theme of the film is about terrorism, as the nation was descending into civil war and anarchy at this time.

The plot is very simple. An albino black man has become the leader of a rebel group. In an act of terror and defiance, he and his men abduct a white woman...raping and murdering her. The rest of the film is about the efforts to bring these killers to justice and to try to prevent the whites in the country from taking the law into their own hands. The guy trying to stop both sides from killing each other is Bill (Christopher Lee).

There are many problems with this movie. It was filmed in Rhodesia and it appears that many of the folks in the film aren't actors at all. Additionally, the cinematography is pretty poor and the movie just looks cheap. Additionally, the film seems like it's trying to titilate...showing irrelevant footage of topless natives as well as a very vivid rape scene which SHOULD have been toned down. Apparently, when the film was brought for release in the UK, censors demanded they cut much of the rape footage.

In view of the decent cast (Christopher Lee, Sybil Danning – let us not forget they would be re-united on the notorious HOWLING II … YOUR SISTER IS A WEREWOLF {1985}! – Trevor Howard and Horst Frank), its origins as a Daniel ("The Wild Geese") Carney novel and the fact that it is not half bad, I was surprised by how sheerly obscure this South Africa-set German adventure is; in fact, the film is known by a variety of titles: WHISPERING DEATH (which is the one sported by the print I watched), THE NIGHT OF THE ASKARI and DEATH IN THE SUN! Actually, I had already scored a print entitled ALBINO but that ran for 83 minutes against the full-length 97 of the one I eventually viewed (or rather 93' in PAL mode); curiously enough, in Italy the film was released as CON LA BAVA ALLA BOCCA (With Foam At The Mouth) which was also the name of a documentary on Mario Bava's unrelated and unreleased cult classic RABID DOGS (1974)!

The exotic background spices up a basic revenge plot with a twist: a police officer turns vigilante after his fiancée is raped and killed by the titular head of a band of marauding savages but is in turn hunted down by the Law. In a way, it sounds like DEATH WISH-meets-FIRST BLOOD-by way of APOCALYPSE NOW (albeit preceding the latter two)…and if the end result is nowhere near as memorable as any of these Hollywood prototypes, the film has enough elements of its own to stick in the mind after it finishes unreeling. The late Mr. Lee is somewhat wasted as the local Chief of Police who, perhaps thankfully, sees his command overtaken by an outsider once the order is out to apprehend his errant young colleague; a heavily sun-tanned Trevor Howard, as the embittered father of the murdered girl (Sybil Danning) easily steals the acting honours with a moving performance; Danning's demise at the hands of the unconvincingly pasty-faced Frank is a powerful scene indeed as he first rapes her as she is being held in mid-air by his henchmen, then French-kisses her as she is passed out, and finally proceeds to render the coup-de-grace by scalping her with a knife; unsurprisingly, this fatal assault was reportedly trimmed for British public consumption. This is further complimented by a couple of grisly shots of mutilated faces, the handiwork of Frank's terrorist troop…although the come-uppance of the albino himself, then, is a far less graphic affair (if no less elaborate, in the vein of THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME, than Danning's fate).

Before signing off, I should mention another commendable contribution made to the film, i.e. Erik Ferstl's music score, which eerily anticipates Riz Ortolani's classic main theme for Ruggero Deodato's reprehensible Amazonian saga CANNIBAL HOLOCAUST (1980). Interestingly, director Goslar's next feature would be SLAVERS (1978) which, not only reunited him with Howard and the forbidding setting but managed to rope in an even better cast (Britt Ekland, Ron Ely, Ray Milland and Cameron Mitchell). Betraying its origins, the soundtrack of ALBINO reverts to German for its very last line, delivered by a departing Howard at the hero's burial.

This rather obscure film from German director Jürgen Goslar (who also directed several episodes of the hugely popular German Krimi series "Derrick") is notable mostly for its cast. Horror icon Christopher Lee is top billed as the British police chief in the African province. His mission is to accomplish peace between the natives and the white people. The late great Horst Frank plays an Albino native who leads a gang of terrorists that try to destroy the efforts to bring the natives and the whites together. And young Sascha Hehn - at the time the film was made nearly unknown, but later cast in some German soft core films and later a TV-star as a heart throbbing doctor or Prince Charming in the schmaltzy series "Das Traumschiff", a sort of German "Love Boat" - is a young officer and the best mate of the ex-policeman on the rampage whose wife has been raped and killed by Horst Frank's evil Albino.

The film itself suffers from its only real problem: Goslar directed the movie as a mix of revenge thriller in the tradition of the John Boorman classic "Deliverance" and a tedious social drama that can not succeed in leaving clichés about African natives out of the story. So the film itself becomes a mishmash of entertaining exploitation film and laughably banal social comment. Whenever Goslar goes for the exploitation, he succeeds; we witness a savage (if not that explicit) rape and murder, some really painful torture and a graphic head shot in "Dawn of the Dead" tradition, only that this film was made two years earlier. Whenever Goslar goes for social comment, the movie becomes bothersome, because it's not really convincing. The climax, on the other hand, is a worst case scenario that partially manages to bring the two aspects of the story together.

All in all, this film is quite interesting for fans of obscure films of the Seventies (be it for the actors alone), but it's also a good example for a movie that doesn't live up to its potentials.

Albino, although made in 1976, works as an action film set in the present day. This movie is basically about conflict between those who enforce the law and those who break it to terrorize others. This conflict is the key, and it explores the temptation of law enforcers to break the law to get the terrorists. This theme is perhaps more relevant now than prior to September 11, 2001.

Sybil Danning fans get to see her in only a few scenes. This is NOT a sexy movie. Her character (Sally) has a key role in the plot development. Her riding a horse to the climactic confrontation for her character reminds me of classic "maiden in peril" Westerns, and thus ends up being of quite appropriate.

The is a Unique glimpse into Rhodesia during its struggle against antagonist forces both internal and external.

The acting is a bit forced but is easily overlooked for the greater story which is a nice blend of action and pathos.

Stereotypes are here but they may surprise you in how they are implemented.

This is not your typical John Wayne action flick but neither is it an anti Rhodesian hack piece. It walks the line between the two and offers up a compelling story of revenge action and drama.

It benefits most from not having Andrew, V. McLaglen's heavy hand to turn it into a parody od the book. Is he did with the wild geese.