The Brigand of Kandahar

An interesting little Hammer offering story wise. You'd think the red coats of the British Army would be the heroes of this Raj story set in 1850. But as it turns out in a welcome twist, they're more the villains, doing the colonial nasty on the local tribespeople, made up generally of black-faced English actors.

Had to laugh at the indignant shock of a couple of reviewers here expressing amazement that more Indians didn't feature in the cast. This is a Hammer production made in around 1964/65 and as such was made on the smell of an oily rag in England. For goodness sake, check out those vintage painted back drops of the castle in the mountains. There is absolutely no Indian location footage and in fact, footage was "borrowed" from a couple of other films to round out the battle scenes. Before we get all lathered up about the casting in a 55 year old "B" grade supporting feature, let's also remember that a bare 3 years before, it was perfectly acceptable for Alec Guinness to play an Arab in Lawrence of Arabia. In fact a couple of years after this, Lawrence Olivier played the Mahdi in Khartoum with little criticism.

As mentioned the only really stand-out feature of this film was the anti-colonial perspective of the British Raj. The villains of the piece were the senior British Officers who fitted up a fellow officer Case for a court-martial, because besides supposedly having "a touch of the tar brush", he had also had an affair with another officer's wife. He ends up running with the local rebel alliance, though their leader, Eli Khan (an hilariously black-faced Oliver Reed), is also depicted as being somewhat cruel and untrustworthy.

It all ends up in a gloriously romantic tragedy of near -Shakespearean proportions, as bodies litter a paper-mache cave hideout and accusing fingers are afterwards pointing in the British establishment direction. Cue the casting credits for this little oddity. I'm sure the production only ever had pretensions to being a support feature, but I give it a 5 for trying something a little different with the story line.

Now, in 2024, we often forget that the UK film industry gave us many adventure movies in the fifties and sixties, at the scale of many Hollywood films, with as much budget, actors, directing skills. It was during an era when UK still had many colonies around the world; it was the opposite to the social tendancies that this movie industry will show us during the same period. And which begun in the forties, just after WW2 and for instance London after the Blitz,, among ruins. The roots of the kitchen sink tradition of the British cinema. Now,, concerning this John Gilling's film, I was so amazed by the quality. I often counfound this film with BANDIT OF ZHOBE, same director, also an adventure film, but with Victor Mature instead of Ron Lewis. We have here the proof that director John Gilling was not only an excellent thriller and crime director and also a terrific horrorr provider - SHADOW OF THE CAT, PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES - but also a little genius in terms of adventure flicks: FURY AT SMUGGLER'S BAY, PIRATES OF BLOOD RIVER...Do not miss them because they are "just" British.

Even those with a fondness for those "Northwest Frontier" movies set in the British Raj of the 1800's will probably be disappointed by this minor, unpersuasive, and somewhat uncharacteristic entry from Hammer Films. The costumes have that clean, new look -- as if they just came from a rental shop -- and the handful of sets are too tidy and well-lit to be anything other than studio creations. Even the rocks have a fiberglass look.

More troubling than the film's skimpy budget, however, is the casting of its main character. He's supposed to be half-English, half-Indian -- one of those chaps who's worked his way up in the ranks of the British Army but who feels he's still regarded with hostility and suspicion by his colleagues. Not only does Ronald Lewis lack the face for this part, (there's nothing at all Indian about him), but he's also short of the darkly-compelling charisma which might make this character "work." He comes across as a provincial English actor who's dressed up in left-over garb from a production of "Kismet." In his defense, however, it must be said that the script gives him little to work with since his character is poorly developed and too often seems simply like the victim of events going on around him.

Oliver Reed might have been a better choice for the lead but here he plays the villain -- a rebellious chieftain who's said to be "half-mad." Unfortunately, this gives him license to indulge in some theatrical behavior which is more embarrassing than enlivening.

At one point a captured British soldier is whipped by the rebels but even this sure-fire scene is too poorly staged to arouse much interest. (Why didn't the rebels tear the soldier's shirt all the way off? Didn't they take Flogging 101?)

While Hammer Studios produced some fairly able historical adventures in the early 1960s - titles such as the serviceable FURY AT SMUGGLER'S BAY and THE DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES - they also made their fair share of stinkers, of which THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR is probably the worst. This is an entirely stodgy costume adventure, made on a low budget and with a script which feels like it was rushed out in a hurry.

The story is cheap and carries some distinctly colonial racial overtones, not least in the presence of anti-hero Ronald Lewis, blacked-up as a half-caste for his role. Lewis must be the singular most obnoxious heroic character in a Hammer film, a guy who I actually despised throughout much of the running time; were we really supposed to feel sorry for him after he swapped allegiances like that?

Elsewhere, it's sub-ZULU antics throughout, enlivened by a handful of larger-scale battle sequences which employ some dodgy back projection which saps them of realism. Once again Hammer has an eye for a distinguished supporting cast, but most of them are wasted here; the only ones who come out of it well are Duncan Lamont and Katherine Woodville. Oliver Reed is cast as the bad guy but I feel he would have made a much more compelling protagonist. In any case, this is as dull as dishwater and one of Hammer's weakest efforts.

Straight out of Rudyard Kipling's standard book of Raj adventures, this sees the disgraced "Lt. Case" (Ronald Lewis) dragooned from his regiment only to take up with their mountain-dwelling nemesis "Eli Khan" (Oliver Reed) swearing vengeance on the colonel (Duncan Lamont) who was responsible for his harsh treatment. The arrival of journalist "Marriot" (Glen Houston) upsets not just the army's applecart a little, but also sends a man high up into the mountains in whom the former soldier can confide. It's also becoming quite clear that though there's a degree of working trust between the khan and the deserter, it's highly likely that "Case" hasn't completely abandoned his loyalties to Queen and Country - and his boss suspects as much, too. Reed isn't really a natural here bedecked in his flowing garb, but there are still quite an entertaining series of flag-waving escapades with plenty of gunfire and menace amidst the polystyrene rocks and industrial scale cheese plants. Yvonne Romain pops up now and again as the selfish "Ratina" and does her best Caroline Munro impersonation, but luckily that element doesn't clog up the boy's own elements of derring-do with sharp knives. Nope, you will never remember it, but I like the genre and this is perfectly watchable.