My review was written in August 1990 after watching the movie on Magnum video cassette.
"Tusks" is a five-year-old actioner about wild game poaching that is embarrassingly inept in terms of script and execution. Lame duck video release has little merit.
Pic was lensed in 1985 in Zimbabwe with the title "Fire in Eden" and had mucho post-production tinkering, credited to Gotham film doctor Simon Nuchtern. Hodge-podge of footage doesn't make sense and ends, as do many direct-to-video features, with an abrupt, irritating fadeout that would cause theatrical influences to throw things at the screen.
Toplined Lucy Gutteridge plays an artist who heads to the fictional African nation Sekomo to join pal Julian Glover in fighting against despoilers of wildlife. She immediately antagonizes ex-con John Rhys-Davies by castigating him in an airport interview as an evil poacher responsible for wiping out the rhino population.
Filmmaker Tara Moore's production problems surface rapidly in the nonmatch of a key prolog with the main action. Pic opens with Andrew Stevens and Rhys-Davies as buddies left with a corpse on their hands when mean hunter James Coburn Junior is killed by a charging buffalo. In the film proper they're depicted four years later as deadly adversaries, each supposedly having accused the other of murdering Coburn.
Though Rhys-Davies is credited as co-scripter with More, his character is an unplayable mass of contradictions -sympathetic one scene, heinous the next. He's portrayed as a victim of racism (of mixed British, Indian and Arab ancestry) yet only interested in killing hundreds of elephants for a fast buck. It's a blemish on an otherwise impressive character actor's career.
Film's melodramatic approach has nothing to say about the real issue of endangered species on this planet. In fact, pic's real bad guy turns out to be a militant conservationist whose Machiavellian approach to advancing his cause includes murder and manipulating the other characters.
"Tusks" features some okay wildlife footage, but it's not adequately integrated to shots of the main actors. Too often Gutteridge and Stevens are just intercut with shots of elephants. Fadeout has them clinching with a shot ringing out seemingly killing one, a groaner that's truly insulting.
