Massacre pour un fauve

I watched the film because of the cast. I am a fan of Mitchum, Martinelli, and Hawkins, All of them were at their best physical condition when they made the film, making the film worthwhile if you were a fan of any of the three. Silvia Koscina, the Yugoslavian actress, has a small role as a stewardess during a business class flight sequence. Interestingly, the noted Italian film director Mauro Bolognini had chosen both Martinelli and Koscina to act in his movies by a coincidence. .The film Rampage was ordinary, if not dumb with a story that has a very predictable ending,

Why is the film stupid? "The Enchantress" in the film is a leopard that apparently attracts Asian tigers in the story. The fact is a leopard is smaller than a grown tiger and they don't like each other and have different habitats. The film and the story suggest something else.

Finally to have a German actor Stefan Schnabel play an Asian village chief was poor casting.

The Wilhelm Zoo in West Germany hires big game hunter Otto Abbot (Jack Hawkins) and trapper Harry Stanton (Robert Mitchum) to travel to Malaysia to bring back two tigers and an "enchantress" (half-breed creature: part-leopard, part-tiger). Abbot's house is filled with wild animal artifacts (head trophies, rugs, animal skins). Harry wants no part of animal killing. Abbot's mistress is the statuesque and lovely Anna (Elsa Martinelli), whom he rescued when she was 14 years-old. She is a crack shot and will be along for the expedition. The jungle guide is Sabu ("The Jungle Book," 1942).

Early on the tone for the movie is set at a dinner club in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia when the confident Abbot suddenly asks Harry if he'll try to take Anna away from him. Harry responds, "You drag it out pretty flat on a table, but as long as you did . . . Yes, I'm gonna try." Anna darts those tantalizing dark eyes; she has subjugated her life to Abbot.

In the jungle the expedition captures two tigers with the help of the local Sakai people, who beat their drums to drive out the tigers from hiding. But as Abbot uses his rifle once, the Sakai chief says that the beaters will no longer help (they are against big game hunters). But there is still one more animal to capture, and the film is not even half over at that point. So there is time for plenty of tension. Although Anna has rebuffed Harry early on, they develop a bond that makes Abbot jealous. Eventually an enchantress is captured after hard work. But on the train to Germany Abbot releases it to attack Stanton, and it soon escapes the train: Abbot is not caring about the damage it will do or the people it will kill. In due course, the climax occurs on a building rooftop with all principals involved.

The acting is fine, and Robert Mitchum has always had a strong screen presence. He reminds one of the legendary real-life trapper, Frank Buck of the earlier 20th century ("Bring 'Em Back Alive," 1930). The underrated Elsa Martinelli is appropriately gorgeous, slender, and sensual. She had a fairly similar role in a comparable but superior film with John Wayne as the love interest ("Hatari," 1962). The photography is fine: "Rampage" was filmed in Hawaii. On the negative side the screenplay could have been better, and the enchantress was rather small and somewhat disappointing. Nevertheless, the movie is still worth a look.

Cannot believe I watched the whole thing. I must have done it out of admiration for its director, Phil Karlson, who, at his best, helmed some great fifties noir like "Brothers Rico" and "Kansas City Confidential" and, at his worst, churned out crapola like this.

Nothing works. Neither the Mitchum/Martinelli pairing nor the cut rate safari movie, featuring a scenery chewing Jack Hawkins, that occupies the first three fourths. And the last fourth, with a magenta hued leopard loose in a German city, has to be the feeblest attempt at a disaster flic, well, ever. (The only victim is some schlubby janitor.) Throw in a banal screenplay with tiresome exchanges regarding loss of virility and killing animals versus trapping them and one of Elmer Bernstein's lesser scores (basically repetitions the title theme) and you can see why this thing teeters on the edge of awful. Give it a generous C minus 'cause Hawaii does a good job as Malaysia's stunt double and it was Sabu's penultimate film (the guy died way too young) and his sad smile is the only affecting thing in it. C minus.

A rare Malay safari flick that Robert Mitchum did because it enabled his family to take a nice vacation in Hawaii. Mitch floats serenely through the film (co-star Jack Hawkins claimed he downed 49 glasses of rum before a dinner) as an expert tracker who agrees to provide a Stuttgart zoo with some wild tigers and a rare Malay leopard. Jack Hawkins also said this film is best forgotten, which is surely true for him because the great German big game hunter he plays is ridiculously arrogant, misogynistic, and only worships his history of safari kills. Not only that, but he seems to have promoted adopted daughter Elsa Martinelli to being his wife and most prized possession. A silly love triangle ensues as they pursue the big cats in Hawaii and at the San Diego Zoo (filming in Malaysia is expensive!). None of the tribal Malaysians depicted looks like they've ever been to the Malay Peninsula, especially the tribal chief who looks more like Alan Hale from Gilligan's Island! Nonetheless, despite the dumb plot this film looks good, has an amusing exotica calypso soundtrack by Elmer Bernstein, a frisky nude bathing scene, and is one of the last films of Sabu, the beloved Indian actor who made a long and successful career out of jungle films. An reasonable substitute if you don't have time to make it to the San Diego Zoo!

Rampage casts Robert Mitchum and Jack Hawkins as a trapper of wild game and a hunter of same respectively. They've been hired by the Berlin Zoo to bag some big cats for exhibition. Both of them see themselves as Hemingway like existential characters, each with a distinct philosophy about the profession they've chosen for themselves. Both have world wide reputations for what they do.

Probably it would all have been fine had not Hawkins introduced Mitchum to Elsa Martinelli his mistress who has been such since she was found in a burned out church during World War II as an adolescent. Hawkins did introduce her to the facts of life, but Elsa's been taking care of business on her own for a while, but she always comes back to Hawkins. A fling with Mitchum though has Hawkins going through the Othello thing without an Iago to stoke those green fires.

The trio is looking for special game, it is reported that there is an enchantress in the Malay jungle, a mixed breed of a tiger and a leopard. When we see the enchantress it looks like it has the bone structure and shape of a tiger, but the spots of a leopard. The Malay natives regard them as special.

I saw Rampage in the theater when it first came out and the jungle scenes are great, but the soap opera plot among the leads is strictly melodramatic. Still I think fans of the leading characters will like it.