Na Selva da Malaya

It is interesting to note that until now there is no review from the UK so I will rectify that.This film is set during the Troubles in Malaya which lasted 9 years till the communist insurgents were defeated.Events such as this were also occurring in Africa with the Mau Mau attacks in Kenya.It was a terrible time for all concerned.This film being aimed at Western audiences shows the planters side without trying to explain why the terrorists are attacking and why but then the Americans rarely explained why the Viet Conf were attacking in for example The Green Berets.This film has quite an exciting finale albeit slightly implausible.Sadly there is one minus.It is the complete miscasting of the delightful actress Claudette Gilbert.The part should have been played by someone such as Margaret Lockwood.

Sweet, docile little Claudette Colbert - firing a machine gun? Anything's possible in the movies!

Colbert and her husband live on their rubber plantation in Malaysia (back when it was Malaya) with their small son. Her husband is too absorbed in the plantation to notice her very much, and she decides that when it's time to take their son to school in England, she will go with him and never return. But then she is unable to leave when bandits kill one of their neighbours, then tries to kill Colbert, and the whole plantation is set up in a murderous game of cat and mouse.

You'd like this if you liked Red Dust with Gable and Harlow, the setting is very similar. For an added bonus, some people may remember the cartoon Riki Tiki Tavi, about a mongoose who takes care of a household and keeps the cobras at bay - this is wonderfully reproduced with a real mongoose and cobra in a thrilling scene, very reminiscent of the cartoon, even down to the same room!

Jack Hawkins and Claudette Colbert star in Outpost In Malaya during post World War II times when the Malayans like everyone else in that part of the world wanted to shake off colonialism. What was going on in Malaya was no different than the French were facing in IndoChina. The only difference is that the British were successful and transitioned to a government that joined the Commonwealth though what its status is now I don't know.

The two are rubber plantation owners and rubber planting is a big investment and it takes many years for a rubber tree to bear enough sap to convert to the rubber than eventually provides tires. When you see the guerrillas draining the sap from the rubber they know exactly how to hurt the planters where they live.

The film is really quite dishonest because the natives are just simply bandits and that's the end of it. The political content of their discontent has been thoroughly drained from this film. Of course when you see the British army there you know it's not just bandits.

Despite the politics being drained Outpost In Malaya is an exciting adventure story as Jack and Claudette defend their home and hearth and investment not to mention their young son played by Peter Asher, later of Peter and Gordon. Young Mr. Asher has an encounter with a cobra and is saved when a mongoose intervenes.

The film is worth seeing for that alone.

Stumbled across this film on an obscure channel late last night.As a Colbert fan I thought it would be worth a watch.Colbert looked fine for her age but the film was hardly inspiring .Even the best actors need good material and this film would only appear to a post war British audience . At the time it was probably a decent enough film but it is now seriously showing it's age.Still that's another Colbert film I've seen -not that many left to watch

By the time of this 1952 film, "Outpost in Malaya," Claudette Colbert's film career was on the inevitable downward trend that befell older female stars from Hollywood's golden days. If these actresses didn't want to go for the character roles, as Bette Davis did, they were for the most part out. Colbert was asked at some point why she wasn't making films anymore, and she said, "There haven't been any offers." And here's an offer she should have turned down. In this film, she's 49 years old, the mother of a small son and married to 42-year-old Jack Hawkins. The couple lives in Malaya, where Hawkins runs a rubber plantation. At the time, post WW II, Malaya was involved in a civil war. Some Malaysians didn't like the plantation owners, so they were subject to attack. A great deal of the film has scenes of gunfighting, bombings, etc.

Hawkins works nonstop to harvest the rubber crop and fight insurgents, and his wife feels separated from him and decides to leave when she takes her son back to England for school. Can they salvage their marriage? Okay movie though the beautiful Colbert, who looks great and is well dressed despite the heat and dirt, is miscast, though very good. The rugged Hawkins is very good as well. It's just not much of a movie - the subplot of marriage on the rocks was an attempt to give the film a little depth, but that doesn't really happen. Baby boomers will enjoy watching Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon as the little boy. Remember when his sister dated Paul McCartney? If you're my age, you do.