In 1821, among the first British sailors to set foot on New Zealand, Phillip Wayne (Jack Hawkins) , a British Naval Officer , along with Paddy Clarke (Noel Purcell) , as they step on New Zeeland's shore and they go into trouble when accidentally walk on sacred Maori burial ground ; Wayne , subsequently , befriends a Maori tribe's chief and falls for his spouse . On his return to England, Wayne's captain asks him to bring ashore a chest full of silk, possibly without being detected by the Customs agents . Then , Phillip accidentally involved in trafficking native shrunken heads that can fetch high prices on the illegal market . Later on, he marries in England to his fiancée Marion Southey (Glynis Johns) . They must continually uproot themselves and migrate New Zealand . As Wayne and his wife return to New Zealand with a small group of followers to settle . There they struggle to take their own farm and wind up fighting against natives .They found the most exotic wilderness that man has ever known ¡Actually filmed in New Zealand ¡. All the strange customs of a forgotten people !
This one deals with a rip-roaring saga of pioneers attempting to forge new frontiers in 19th-Century New Zealand against all odds ; packing adventures , feats , thrills and some creepy scenes about shrunken heads of Maori Warriors . Beautiful , colorfully shot , often moving epic drama about immigrants in New Zealand during XIX Century around a handful of settlers who have to carry out a hard coexistence with the savage,cannibal, warlike Maoríes , and it won't be easy. An uncertain attempt to match the sweep and power of the American Wagon-Train or Covered-Wagon epics set in the Far West , here Maorí people doing the marauding Injuns Indians bit and the English colonists standing-in for the settlers and cowboys . Being a very British and very colonial saga in similar style to ¨Zulu¨ by Cry Endfield , ¨Zulu Dawn¨ by Douglas Hickcock , ¨Untamed¨ by Henry King , ¨The sundowners¨ by Fred Zinnemann ; based on the novel ¨The seekers¨ by John Guthrie and nicely adapted from the book and screenplay by William Fairchild . Well acted by all , as Jack Hawkins gives a decent acting as seaman Phillip Wayne who sets foot on New Zealand where he befriends a Maori tribe , being arrested and condemned for smuggling ; he is well accompanied by Glynis Johns , Noel Purcell , Kenneth Williams and Ian Fleming , not to be confused with the creator of James Bond, Ian Fleming.
Special mention for the brilliant Cinematography in shining Technicolor by Geoffrey Unsworth , shot on location in New Zealand , Whakatane, Bay of Plenty, North Island, New Zealand and Pinewood Studios, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire, England, UK . Atmospheric and evocative score from William Alwyn and musical conductor by usual Muir Matheson . This motion picture titled ¨The seekers¨ or ¨Land of fury¨ was uneven but professionally directed by Ken Annakin, containing its exciting momnets . Annakin had an amazingly diverse early career, including as a trainee income tax inspector in Hull during the Depression. His feature debut, Holiday Camp (1947), was a comedy about a Cockney family on vacation. It was made for the Rank Organization and was a modest success, spawning three sequels, all of which he directed. He worked steadily thereafter, mainly in light comedies. One of his more atypical films was the dark thriller Across the bridge (1957) starred by Rod Steiger , based on a Graham Greene story about a wealthy businessman who embezzles a million dollars from his company, kills a man who resembles him and steals his identity so he can escape to Mexico . In the 1960s he specialized in turning out all-star, splashy, big-budget European/American co-productions, shot on the Continent . Ken was an expert on successful Wartime genre and Adventure genre as ¨The new adventures of Pippi Longstockings¨, ¨Pirate movie¨ , ¨Paper tiger¨, ¨The fifth Musketeer¨ , ¨Call of the wild¨, ¨The Swiss family Robinson¨, ¨Land of fury¨, ¨The Sword and the Rose¨, ¨The story of Robin Hood and his Merry Men¨, ¨Cheaper to keep her¨, ¨Third man on the mountain¨ , ¨Those magnificent men in their flying machines ¨, ¨Those daring young men and their jaunty jalopies¨ , ¨The fifth musketeer¨. He was one of the directors of the epic World War II spectacle as ¨The Longest day¨(1962) and went on ¨Battle of the Bulge (1965), both of which were financial--if not exactly critical- successful. His final film was Genghis Khan: The Story of a Lifetime (2010), a film that was started in 1992 under Annakin's direction but never completed. Rating : 6/10 . Acceptable and passable but dated colonial /adventure movie .
