Albino

"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.

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.

The successful phase of the GERMAN ADVENTURE FLICKS (DER SCHATZ IM SILBERSEE (The Treasure of Silver Lake9 / HEISSER HAFEN Hong Kong / JAGD AUF BLAUE DIAMANTEN) was actually long over in 1976. Nevertheless, actor (UND EWIG SINGEN DIE WÄLDER / AND FOREVER SING THE FORESTS) and director (DAS MÄDCHEN UND DER STAATSANWALT / THE GIRL AND THE PROSECUTOR) Jürgen GOSLAR brought a sensational adventure film to West German cinemas.

The action takes place in present-day Zimbabwe (formerly: Rhodesia). Terick (James FAULKNER, known from GAME OF THRONES) is looking forward to the end of his police service in the British colony. In the future he wants to spend more time with his beautiful fiancée Sally (Sybil DANNING). Then a fateful attack occurs. Incited by an albino local (Horst FRANK, probably the most bizarre role in the CINECITTA divo's career), rebels against British colonial rule attack the farm of Johannes (ACADEMY AWARD Nominee (1961 for SONS AND LOVERS) Trevor HOWARD) and kill Terick's fiancée in the process. Blinded by thoughts of revenge, he and Katchemu (Sam WILLIAMS) track down the albino, whom everyone calls "Whispering Death". This sinister act of revenge goes against the grain for Terick's former boss (Christopher LEE) and the specially assigned Captain Turnbull (Erik SCHUMANN, known from HIMMEL OHNE STERNE).

From today's perspective, this excursion into the colonial past is questionable for several reasons. The exceptional German actor Horst FRANK plays his role brilliantly, but seems out of place and presumptuous as an albino local. The violence shown in the film is staged in a very inflammatory and racist way. Nevertheless, this film stands out in West German film production of the 1970s. A filmmaker like Jürgen GOSLAR dared to produce a genre film that very strictly fulfills audience expectations in terms of action-packed stories. The great German director Dominik GRAF also acknowledges this in his enlightening documentary OFFENE WUNDE DEUTSCHER FILM about the last remnants of the West German film industry of the 1970s.

Jürgen GOSLAR's film clearly takes some getting used to, but shows that West German cinema could also have moved in the direction of audience-friendly genre entertainment.

In a smaller role is the young actor Sascha HEHN (NACKT UND HEISS AUF MYKONOS), who after various appearances in West German sex films with DAS TRAUMSCHIFF (from 1981) and DIE SCHWARZWALDKLINIK (from 1985) was to become one of the biggest West German television stars in the 1980s.

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.

A well acted depiction of life in White Rhodesia from the European point of view, and a rather disturbing story of an irreconcilable conflict between a good man's justifiable need for revenge and the necessity of upholding the law. Parents, and those sensitive to violence, should be cautioned that this is an extremely gruesome film with explicit scenes of rape, murder, torture, and mutilation.

The film credibly portrays the lives of European settlers determined to remain in their adopted land despite the increasing danger of rebellion. Most of them honestly believe that it is possible to live in peace with the Africans as long as they are willing to accept their "civilizing" guidance. The rebels are presented as bloodthirsty thugs who terrorize other Africans and have no real program of true revolution other than savage hatred of the White Man. Most of the Africans are more or less loyal to the Whites and are usually shown to be strong, honorable, and trustworthy, although often in a patronizing manner.

Christopher Lee is quite good as a police chief determined to prevent vigilante justice when a group of terrorists led by an albino (pronounced "albeeno" in the film) witch doctor (Horst Frank) rape and murder the fiancée of a man recently retired from the police force. He (James Faulkner); along with a couple of equally vengeful African servants of the victim's elderly father (Trevor Howard); takes off into the bush to find and kill those responsible. These are not evil men out to indiscriminately slaughter Africans but people who feel that there can be no rest for their souls until they spill the blood of The Albino and his crew. Lee sympathizes with their feelings but is firm in his determination to maintain law and order and bring the killers to justice legally. This, of course, also means hunting down the revenge party, causing the settler's militia to mutiny and withdraw from the operation.

The pursuit of both the killers and the posse is grim and realistic, causing the viewer to actually perceive the stresses and fatigue of the participants. Although somewhat cheaply done, subtly racist, and overly clipped and trite in spots, the film is of great interest from both the historical and moral perspective. I saw it many years ago, but, unfortunately, it; like a surprising number of other quality films; hasn't been made commercially available on either VHS or DVD.