Skullduggery

American movie by Gordon Douglas (A Night of Adventure) about Vercors's Animaux dénaturés. The anthropologist Sybil Greame (Susan Clark, Colossus) leads in Papua New Guinea with the father Dillingham (Chips Rafferty, Walk into Paradise, which has inspired the female paddled canoes scene) an expedition backed by the industrial Vancruyse (Paul Hubschmid, Journey to the Lost City) and his lawyer Buffington (Alexander Knox, Bikini Paradise), in order to find old bones and get some skull dug in a remote area, hoping for a Nobel prize.

An adventurer working at the airfield, Doug (Burt Reynolds, Deliverance), manages to take part to the expedition with his pal Kreps (Roger Carmel, Gambit) by getting rid of the mechanic Bruce (Edward Fox, The Day of the Jackal): they want to discover on their side an important deposit of phosphorous highly valuable for color TV tubes. Arriving in the highland mountains, they find a strange tribe of prehistoric creatures which could be the famous missing link of evolution. As Kreps manages to make contact with a female of the tribe, whom he called Topazia (Pat Suzuki, The Year of the Dragon), the great question arises: are they apes or humans?

The film lacks unfortunately of rhythm, focusing and common thread in its first part, but then regains in interest for the trial development full of trickery, with characters such as the judge Draper (Rhys Williams, How Green was my Valley), the Attorney General (William Marshall, The Boston Strangler), the racist doctor Eaton (Wilfrid Hyde-White, The Third Man), or the Black Panther like Smoot (the Motown manager Booker Bradshaw, Coffy).

This was not a film about "action", nor was it "boring", unless you are the type that requires external stimulation as a substitute for actually thinking. This was a very poignant film about human rights and what, exactly, being human means. As another reviewer said, the climactic ending brought me to tears. This is not a film that should be viewed by a bunch of kids at a sleepover... it will be totally lost and wasted on them. This is a film that should be shown in every political science and philosophy class for discussion. Don't let the pathetic reviews scare you away if you can find this movie... it was the viewer that was lacking, not the film...

I must have unknowingly been in the test audience for the original version of this film at a local drive-in theater in 1970. I recently saw the current version on TV again, and was shocked at the mutilation of the original plot. The movie I remember was longer and the missing scenes and dialogue comprised a biting satire of race relations that still resonates in my memory today. The present version of the film has sadly had the best scenes and lines excised out, in the name of avoiding controversy in 1970.

We have come a long way since then. This film was far more entertaining in it's original form, and deserves re-release in a Special Edition or Director's cut DVD!

I watched this movie in the early seventies, at my hometown in Mexico. I must have been 14 or 15 at the time. I liked the movie a lot not because of the acting, but because of the subject, which captivated me. The ethical and philosophical question of what constitutes humanity. Maybe the cinematographic quality of the film is not great, but having seen this movie only once and still remembering its impact on me after almost forty years is a tribute to its merits. I remember vividly the shock the climax scene caused in me, and the anger at the injustice done to the poor critters, and their unresolved fate, which undoubtedly would not be a good one if we go by the conventional wisdom of the time. I do believe this movie is much better conceptually than it is generally considered. I hope it will someday be released on DVD. I would certainly buy it.

The cinematography in Technicolor has always appealed to me and scenes such as the tribal women rowing their four (4) large canoes with the archaelogical safari team and their supplies down the New Guinea river(s) infested with killer native tribes, snakes, and crocodiles, injects the needed adventure and to stamp this movie as a bona fide thriller.

Burt Reynolds and Susan Clark are excellent choices as the two male and female leads who both have romantic inclinations but for very different reasons. The audience is asked to form their own opinion on what their discovery of the Tropi tribe means to the human race.

As with many of the world controversies regarding racism, evolution, slavery, and the industrial revolution, the film Skullduggery will leave you with some questions as to what is fair and what is right when a new discovery such as the Tropi tribe is uncovered.

Skullduggery (1970) starts off as a combination of adventure with some light humor and a romantic twist thrown in for good measure, but it was not how I expected the film to transpire as I had been impressed by Burt Reynolds performance in the later (1972) film Deliverance. Not to say I was disappointed in the film Skullduggery, as I was not. I really enjoy scenic pictures of far away corners of the world, and the directors Gordon Douglas and Richard Wilson captured the landscape of New Guinea with crisp and clean panoramic views of the green forests, huge mountains, and seedy crocodile infested waters.

I enjoyed Skullduggery and will most likely watch it again in a few years. This review is somewhat of a personal reminder to confirm a thumbs up review which I give a 6 out of 10 IMDb rating.