Harry Black and the Tiger

Needless to say,the star is neither Granger nor Rush, but India : the filming on location is absolutely wonderful ,with an effective sense of space of the wide screen and color, a good use of the natives and an Indian actor as the first supporting actor.

The screenplay blends adventure movie and melodrama with mixed results ;sometimes Granger recalls Gregory Peck in "the snows of Kilimandjaro" (1952):cured by Barbara Rush who plays the role of a married with child Susan Hayward ,he remembers his past during WW2,(Spanish civil war for Peck) , when her husband ,then a coward brother in arm costs him his leg. There are also snatches of 'the lost weekend" (1945)when Rush tries to get Granger out of alcohol hell.

The love affair is bland and not very convincing (the the absence of Jim ,a careerist with bright prospects ,does not help :however ,when the boy tells his daddy that a father's got to be a hero and urges him to follow Harry in his tiger hunt (where he dismally fails and shows his cowardice again) this is a good beginning.

The tiger ,as the film progresses,will become Harry's obsession ,even injured ,crippled and alcoholic , he does not renege on his task : the tiger claimed too many lives and love takes a back seat to this endless hunt.

This is one of my favorite movies because it has the most realistic tiger behavior ever depicted in films. Man-eating tigers still exist in Asia--although now much rarer than they were--and it amazes me how well the director was able to show us how a man eating tiger would really have behaved. I worked with tigers and elephants for 25 years in a zoo (and I wholeheartedly approve of zoos now gradually ending the keeping of these animals in captivity)so I can tell you that this film gives you a uniquely realistic view of a man-eating tiger's behavior. The scene where the line of elephants are being ridden to drive the tiger towards the hunters is nice--when you see those elephants' trunks come up into the air they really are smelling their arch enemy a tiger, and they don't know it is a tame movie tiger so that is absolutely real, too. If you want to read about man-eating tigers, get books by Jim Corbett and Kenneth Anderson--they make fascinating reading. If you want to see similar superb depiction of a rogue elephant's real life behavior on film, get a copy of Jungle Princess, starring Dorothy Lamour (1936).

During a hunt for a carnivorous tiger , the two-fisted white hunter Harry Black , Stewart Granger, comes across his prior wife , Barbara Rush , now married to Tanner , Anthony Steel , an old friend of Harry . Both of whom met long time ago at a POW concentration camp during WWI where they attempted to escape .The motivation grows with each intent to catch the man-eating tiger, but things go wrong when the son , Martin Stephens , is lost somewhere in the perilous jungle. And to make matters worse the dangerous beast goes on attacking .

This is an adventure/drama movie , though I think of being more a loving drama than an adventure film . This is a passable jungle drama of acceptable quality , including a cracking final highlight with the ferocious tiger terrorizing people and other bonus attractions . Decent cast as Stewart Granger as a tough white hunter and ex-army Major , a role that sits easily on his shoulders .Barbara Rush gives one of his best acting as the figure from Black's past .Anthony Steel plays the old friend who teams up with the ex-war buddy . Support cast is pretty good, such as the sympathetic IS Johar who played in Lawrence Arabia , Kamala Davi who performed in Jeronimo , and Martin Stephens , the prodigy boy who acted in such classic movies as The innocents, Village of damned, and A touch of larceny .

Colorful cinematography shot on location in India by John Wilcox, though a perfect remastering being really necessary . Wilcox was a prestigious cameraman and Hammer regular , including known titles as Hound of Baskerville, The last valley , Kung Fu against 7 gold vampires, Chairman , Express Bongo , Zarak , Safari , Black Knight, Secret agent SZ , Operation Robinson , High below Zero , Hysteria, Judith , and Craze. Atmospheric musical score by Clifton Parker , including India sounds , and musical director by habitual Muir Matheson .

Interesting though a little boring script by Sydney Bohem , a prestigious writer who wrote notorious films such as : The big heat , The tall men , The savage, When worlds collide , Branded , Side street and Shock treatment . The motion picture was profesionally , though with no enthusiasm made by Hugo Fregonese and it won a Bafta film award . He was a good Argentinean craftsman who worked in his country Argentina : Pampa Barbara , Hollywood : Wind blow , Man in the attic , Apache drums , Untamed frontier , Decameron nights , Mark of the renegade and directed great stars as Gary Cooper , Barbara Stanwick , Anthony Quinn , Cesar Romero ,Cyd Charysse, Jack Palance. And also worked in Europe in films as Marco Polo , 3 Musketeers , Pampa Salvaje , Old Shatterhand , Dracula vs Frankenstein .Rating : 5.5/10 . The flick will appeal to Stewart Granger fans .

Part Snows Of Kilimanjaro, part Moby Dick, Harry Black And The Tiger will never attain the literary ranks of those Hemingway and Melville classics. Still the book turned into a good movie with Stewart Granger giving a good performance in his first film after he was loose from his MGM Hollywood contract.

There's a tiger on the prowl in a remote corner of India and the government has contracted white hunter Stewart Granger for the job of killing it. There's not much you can do with big cats once they've gotten an appetite for human flesh. But the job gets personal with Granger when he discovers the tiger has chosen for its hunting grounds, the vicinity of a tea plantation run by Anthony Steel and his wife Barbara Rush who's always had a thing for Granger in any event.

There are some flashback sequences telling how the three main players have arrived to the point they are now. Steel did not go through with his part of an escape plan during World War II and as a result Granger lost a leg. And both are in love with Rush, but Granger bows out and now they're thrown together again.

Steel was weak during the war, but now Granger questions his own fitness for the job especially after getting mauled by the tiger. Still he has developed his own Ahab like fixation on the beast.

I have to say Stewart Granger sure looks the part, a carryover when he scored such a big hit in King Solomon's Mines. Later on he did a film called The Last Safari in the Sixties and it was hardly a success.

Look for I.S. Johar and Kamala Devi as Granger's guide and his Indian nurse when he is recovering from his encounter with the tiger. Devi has some really sharp observations about what she's around her.

Not the best jungle films, but the Indian cinematography is nice and fans of the leads will be pleased enough.

This is strictly run of the mill stuff, but it passes the time if anything, filmed in India it has good photography and stars one of my favourite actors stewart granger, he looks like his character in 'king solomon's mines' - alan quatermain, he also has a faithful sidekick called Babu.

The story is about a killer tiger on the loose in a local community and the various problems it causes to its captors.In the film granger's character has a steel leg, he lost his real leg in the war, so we get a few exciting flashbacks of his war experiences which are done nicely, these scenes would have to be the best in the film.