Killers of Kilimanjaro

ROBERT TAYLOR nearing the end of his career was still making robust adventure films and fitting the roles as well as he did earlier in time. Here he's the safari leader assigned to building a railroad and dealing with treacherous convicts and restless natives while venturing to take a trip through dangerous Watusha territory.

There's plenty of colorful location scenery to create a vivid picture of the long trek and the usual number of obstacles thrown into his path before he and his group reach their destination. It's a story that borrows heavily from the outline of "King Solomon's Mines" without delving into the background of its characters but just directed in routine adventure style by director Richard Thorpe, who had once guided Taylor through several of his MGM films in the old days.

ANTHONY NEWLEY lends breezy support as Taylor's bumbling assistant but the accent is not on the supporting cast of humans but the many African animals that are viewed along the way. Along for the search for her father is pretty ANNE AUBREY in a purely decorative role.

Summing up: Routine safari adventure is enhanced by some handsome location photography and the many wild animals spotted during the trek.

This is a clicked version of all the African adventure films that came out in the fifties.It might have had a chance with a youthful leading man.Robert Taylor looks an old man at 48 though it does not seem slightly risible to the writers that a romance with a 21 year old Anne Aubrey is somewhat unlikely.Well photographed scenery is about the only bright spot.Assuming it is not stock shots.

Robert Taylor arrives in Africa to survey a route from Mombasa to Lake Victoria for a railroad. Of course British policy against the slave trade has some of the locals up in arms and the fact that Taylor makes it clear his company will not be permitting the transport of slaves makes him a few enemies, chiefly Gregoire Aslan the big honcho among Arab slave traders.

Taylor's got a friend in the enemy camp though. Young John Dimech came over on the boat with Taylor and he's Aslan's son, recently educated in an English prep school where he's taken in some western ideas. He hitches a ride with Taylor, Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey on the surveying expedition. Aubrey is along to locate her father and fiancé who've disappeared into the interior.

One of the previous reviewers remarked about the good location photography in East Africa that highlights Killers of Kilimanjaro. It's my contention, expressed elsewhere in other reviews that ever since King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen, phony backlot jungles were just not going to do for the movie going public.

The story is not as good as either of those other films, but Killers of Kilimanjaro is good routine action adventure film and the cast give a good account of themselves. Anthony Newley has some funny moments as Taylor's tenderfoot assistant and Allan Cuthbertson for me stands out in the cast as Aubrey's dissolute fiancé.

Taylor leads safari to finish railway line through hostile African tribal region, dangerous animal encounters and saboteurs. Action is at a premium till last 15mins which is a free for all battle (pretty entertaining) but what goes before is some fairly yawnsome fish out of water comedy relief with Anthony Hawley as Taylor's sidekick, and no chemistry (blink and you miss it) romance between Taylor and leading lady. Lots of animal wildlife stock footage and lots and lots of walking about. Taylor is a bit one note but ok as ex-army type who is unfazed by anything that crosses his path.

He's a man of action who doesn't flinch even when spears are thrown between his legs!😂. Not a badly made film , but just with a mechanical script, and cardboard characters.

In a word DULL.🤔😀

It's an hybrid of many things, this - and all set in the not very politically correct scenario of late 19th century colonial Africa. Robert Taylor is "Adamson" - a railway engineer tasked with completing a dangerous stretch of track between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. No mean feat as he must face duplicity from some, slave-trading, locals with vested interests and some hostility from the natives whose land he must cross. Adding to his difficulties, he is engaged by "Jane" (a pretty unremarkable Anne Aubrey) to try to track down her engineer brother - a man charged with the same task earlier, but who has disappeared. It's a solid boy's own adventure story this with plenty of stereotypes of the time peppering a tale that has little jeopardy but just enough action and beasties to sustain it for ninety minutes. The one thing I did struggle with was the curious casting of Anthony Newley as his assistant "Hooky" but otherwise this is just a sort of "King Solomon's Mines" meets "Northwest Frontier" type of film that lauded the pioneering spirit of empire at a time when that's what cinema audiences wanted. It's entirely forgettable fayre, and very much of a time long gone - in just about every fashion.