Killers of Kilimanjaro

A British adventure; A story set during German colonial rule of Tanganyika in 19th Century East Africa. It is about an American engineer who arrives in the Mount Kilimanjaro region to finish building a railroad but he is consistently beset by hostile natives and wild beasts. This film was inspired by the story of the Tsavo maneating lions recounted in the African Bush Adventures by J.A. Hunter and Daniel P. Mannix. This is a colourful action adventure with some moments of mild suspense and specks of good humour and features wildlife in attractive locations in Moshi, Tanganyika. Robert Taylor plays the indefatigable hero with panache and grace, faced with an assortment of tribulations, including wild animals, cannibals, slave traders. Anne Aubrey plays a rather bland love interest providing no real spark and so it relies on the landscape and exotic culture for diversion. Maltese actor John Dimech ("Lawrence of Arabia") gives delightful support as a young Arab boy. The story is straightforward, depicting indigenous races as unenlightened, merciless or plain greedy, and Anthony Newley is portrayed as an emasculated Brit who regains some self-respect. The romance is underplayed which gives it a monotone feel. All in all, it is a film that progresses to a hectic pace though it has some old-fashioned morals.

Rather than the misleading title, the name on the credits as director of the reliably uninspired Richard Thorpe warns you what to expect from this lacklustre copy of 'King Solomon's Mines' with regular cuts away to travelogue shots of zebras, giraffes, crocodiles and so on.

Poor Earl Cameron is required to wear feathers and bones as a witch doctor. But Anthony Newley's 'funny' Englishman is if anything equally demeaning, and Robert Taylor's condescending treatment of him endears you to neither.

This British-made safari adventure is yet another outing from Warwick Films (which would eventually evolve into Eon Productions with the James Bond series); although the title itself is meaningless, the plot awfully thin and the budget evidently restrained, the end results are quite pleasant and handsome to look at (despite the panning-and-scanning from the original 'Scope ratio). American Robert Taylor fills in the required "fading Hollywood star" spot for added marquee' value, while fetching redhead Anne Aubrey and amiably clumsy Anthony Newley – both reunited from the same team's THE BANDIT OF ZHOBE (1959; a screening of which, coincidentally, also came about for me on the same day I acquired this one!) are the proverbial young up-and-coming stars. While Taylor is ostensibly a railroad engineer accompanying Aubrey to seek out her long-lost father and fiancée (Allan Cuthbertson) in dangerous Warusha country, there is hardly a train in sight throughout the film but instead as much actual animal footage as their (limited) resources could buy. The cast is rounded-up by a would-be villainous Gregoire Aslan, his spunky son played by our very own John Dimech, (who joins Taylor's expedition and, bizarrely, orders the African porters around in his native Maltese tongue for a while but then swaps for what sounds like gibberish passing for authentic Swahili!), Martin Benson (as a treacherous head porter), Martin Boddey (as a rival German railroad engineer) and, very early on, Donald Pleasence as a ship's captain. It was amusing for me to watch Dimech sharing scenes with Newley and Pleasence since both these two stalwarts would themselves come to Malta – in the late 1960s (controversially) and early 1980s (obscurely, although I did manage to catch a glimpse of him drinking at the bar of a local Band Club) respectively!

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, an engineer, has been nominated for completing the first African railroad, to run from Mombasa to Lake Victoria in East Africa...

Taylor ends his journey with his sidekick, Anthony Newley (providing a sort of Sancho Panza character) and comes up with a young English girl (the red-haired Anne Aubrey) who is attempting to find her lost father and her fiancé who have disappeared in the jungle...

Though warned of the obstacles of the journey, Aubrey insists on going along, and soon falls in love with Taylor... Aubrey discovers that her father is dead and that her fiancé has become an alcoholic, but, of course, Taylor repays the two losses...

Gregoire Aslan portrays the magnificent enemy, an Arab slaver who wants to get the railroad to make easier the transportation of his slaves...

Photographed in Tanganyka and England with fascinating shots of a variety of wildlife, "Killers of Kilimanjaro" is an old-fashioned safari adventure full of action and wild animals...