East of Sudan

A very poor man's 'African Queen' that must have seemed old-fashioned in it's patronising treatment of the natives even when it was originally made. Dashed off in three weeks at Shepperton by producer Charles Schneer and director Nathan Juran for the bottom half of a double bill with their main feature 'First Men in the Moon', it has the vices of Schneer's films with Ray Harryhausen enumerated by the late Bill Warren as "underfinancing, pandering to the 'appropriate' audience, a slightly cheesy air" all present and correct (plus a truly awful score by Laurie Johnson) without the redeeming input by Harryhausen himself.

Fortunately, more by luck than judgement Schneer has gathered together an extremely attractive quartet of actors, including an unrecognisable 11 year-old Jenny Agutter as a blue-eyed Indian princess (initially taken for a boy by Anthony Quayle when he first meets her), while director Juran keeps the camera on the move during the hilarious studio exteriors that resemble something out of 'Ripping Yarns' on to which they have been corralled and into which colour footage has been spliced from 'The Four Feathers' and various fifties jungle pictures.

Derring-do in the desert, re-teaming Anthony Quale and Sylvia Sims, who previously appeared together trekking across the desert in "Ice Cold in Alex" (1958). Along for the ride are Derek Fowlds (from "Yes Minister") and a young Jenny Agutter, whom viewers may remember from "Logan's Run" (1976). This time, however, instead of trying to stay one jump ahead of "Jerry" in the Western Desert, Tony and Sylvie are on the run from Dervishes, Arab slavers and Fuzzy-Wuzzies in 1880's Sudan.

Most of the action sequences are lifted straight out of the 1939 film version of "The Four Feathers." However, that is not a bad thing, since "The Four Feathers" was one of the greatest action-adventure films ever produced and, unlike the dreadful 2002 remake, actually was filmed entirely on location in the Sudan, something which would be impossible today.

Anthony Quale plays an experienced British "Squaddie" trying to escape to Khartoum after his entire unit has gotten the chop. En route he falls in with a green young Lieutenant (Fowlds) along with a prudish British governess (Sims) and her Egyptian charge played by young Jenny Agutter in her first film role. Quale quickly demonstrates that he is the only one of the mismatched group who is able to distinguish his sphincter from his medial brachial joint. However, his principal difficulty is in persuading his upper-class companions to accept the leadership of a mere "prole". This film may not quite be up to the quality of "The Four Feathers", nor even of "Ice Cold in Alex", but it is an entertaining journey nonetheless.

A couple of years before KARTHOUM, this good small budget British adventure yarn is very agreeable, as also was FLIGHT OF THE LOST BALOON, SIEGE OF THE SAXONS from the same director Nathan Juran, an American film maker. The mid sixties will be the moment where UK film industry will definitely stop their production of adventure movies, which was a testimony, a mark, of the colonialist past, history of England, the widest empire in the world, all over the planet. The end of British colonialism will also provoke the collapse of the British adventure film genre. It will be replaced by the social "kitchen sink" mode, with directors succh as John Schlesinger, Lindsay Anderson, Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson.... So this very one is pretty enjoyable to watch, but light hearted, for the whole family. However, I highly prefer the awesome KARTHOUM, directed by Basil Dearden. Far darker, violent, much much more powerful.

Adventure set in Sudan in the 1880s where the British are fighting the Mahdi forces attempting to end the slave trade.

With Khartoum under siege, two British soldiers help a governess and her charge to safety. On their adventurous journey down the river Nile, they encounter wild animals, native tribes and even romance.

The stock footages and the fact it was shot in a studio is obvious, but it's not a boring film. It's an old-fashioned adventure film that invokes the child in us. Plus it's got the underrated Anthony Quayle who stars in a role that would've been tailor made for Stewart Granger. Nice action sequences rounds up this colourful romp that Nathan Juran knows how to make.

EoS has been screened several times recently on British TV and the synopsis seemed promising. It turned out to be a mix of "Ice Cold in Alex" (Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Syms escaping from a beleaguered town), "North West Frontier" (heroic Brit, governess and child escaping from a beleaguered town), "The Four Feathers" (much stock footage) and several travelogues (stock footage of various animals and native dancing).

Other reviewers here on IMDb have already commented on the amateurish mixing in of the footage of charging animals. I am resigned to the heroine in films of this vintage apparently having access to make-up and hairdressing facilities as she undergoes various privations, Miss Woodville continuing to look glamorous at the end. And Murchison's rapidly falling in love with Miss Woodville is par for the course, though usually in films such relationships develop into a three-way romance with rivalry between the two men. In EoS his passion seems to have fizzled out as quickly as it appeared.

But there were at least three risible scenes. The first was when, after Baker had rued the small stock of ammunition, Murchison fires his revolver several times in enemy country to stampede a herd of animals to delight Asua. Then he sets off the signal fire when he sees a boat on the Nile. Not even the most callow officer would be so stupid. Thirdly, when the fugitives are hiding from the slavers they are barely concealed by a few fronds of foliage; they are fully visible to the camera - and thus to the men searching for them inches away who do not notice them.

One might also think Baker very well-spoken for a private soldier who had been demoted from sergeant several times, but, as other films ("Beau Geste", "Under Two Flags") have shown, "gentleman-rankers" did exist.