A l'est du Soudan

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.

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.

I do not recall seeing a film which derives not only background shots but most of its action from stock shots and parts of another feature,including the climax.So virtually all of the action comes from The Four Feathers(1938)This film looks as if it has been made on a shoestring.For example there are shots of charging elephants and you have the actors shooting at them from in front of a process screen.It is so clear that they have not been anywhere near the Sudan.At the climax you have Anthony Quayle on a small set on the left of frame with the main action fromThe Four Feathers either put in by a process screen or an optical printer.The acting is not up to much ,the only exception being the dependable Anthony Quayle.So all told rather a disappointment.

Aside from the fact that much of this seems to have been cannibalised from "The Four Feathers" (1939), it makes for quite an entertaining action adventure with Anthony Quayle ("Baker") and Sylvia Sims ("Miss Woodville") trying to help smuggle the young daughter of the Emir of Barash "Asua" (Jenny Agutter) through the lines of the Mahdi's army that is challenging the British in the Sudan. It's a cheap and cheerful adventure, with a minimal budget and some rather static indoor sets that let it down rather - and Quayle was always a much better stage actor than he was on screen, but that said there's a little chemistry on screen between the two leads and just enough action to keep the thread from unravelling. Not a film you are likely to recall seeing, but it is still watchable in a boy's own adventure sort of way.

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.