Dirkie

I have just finished watching the film "Duma" on one of the movies channels on Homechoice in the UK and throughout kept having flashes of a film I half remembered which I saw as a kid. At first I thought "Duma" must be a remake but there were too many deviations.

After a phone call to South Africa and a lot of arguing my Mother reminded me that as a kid we saw a movie called "Dirkie" at the drive-in in Joh'burg. I wasn't even at school and she has never yet managed to remember both plot and title.

I was sure she was wrong. I'd never heard of "Dirkie" and then I looked up the title on the Internet and had a great time reading all the comments.

I too remember this poor kid being chased by ostriches and getting stung by a scorpion. And walking for ever through the sand. Were the chapped lips and mouth that was stuck together the reason there was so little dialogue? Or was it that the boy was Afrikaans-speaking and the movie was being sold outside of SA?

So if you want to watch something similar (or perhaps you're a home-sick South African sitting in a freezing cold London) I recommend "Duma". It is a kid's movie but very touching. I think I'll have to find an excuse to watch it again.

I remember seeing this incredible film in 1977/78 in a double bill with 'Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger". I was three years old and yet it has remained firmly lodged in the back of my memory. The only problem was that I did not know the name of the film. I remember absolutely clearly the scene where the boy thinks the natives have cooked his dog, the boy realising that he has just eaten his only friend. I remember wailing and moaning in the cinema, traumatised by this act of impossible perversity. Finally i know the name of this film which made such a huge impression on me. i will track it down as soon as possible and I would suggest other imdb users do the same.

Like many others I saw this film as a young child in the early 1970s, in a cinema in suburban Sydney, Australia, at the age of 7. At the time, I really wasn't sure of the origin of what I was watching. Given the South African accents, which sound a bit like Australian accents, I thought it was set in a stranger version of Australia. With African animals. Well, just the creepy African animals like hyenas, as the nicer African animals like elephants and giraffes never make an appearance. This doppelgänger Australia quality only heightened the truly, deeply disturbing nature of the film. Was it possible perhaps that we had hyenas in the Australian desert? And the Kalahari desert men did look like Aboriginals to me, as a child. I distinctly remember the scene where the rock knocks him into the pool and the water becomes bloody. Well, what child could forget that? Time went by and no one I spoke to about this film had the faintest idea what I was talking about - no one else had ever seen it, or heard of it. Which of course made it all the more perplexing. Then a few years later, around 1973, I saw my second freaky desert film. Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout. It had strange echoes of Lost in the Desert. I thought it was perhaps a remake. I could tell Walkabout was definitely set in Australia, and then I wondered if Lost in the Desert had been an Australian film after all. Or maybe it didn't actually exist. Perhaps I had dreamed a simpler version of Walkabout, before I had even seen Walkabout. Walkabout of course was every bit as disturbing as Lost in the Desert for a child. But you know what? Between Lost in the Desert, and Walkabout, I grew to love both cinema, and the desert. And I thank both film directors for creating films about children that spoke to me as a child more strongly than a dozen Disney movies.

You can find this at cvmc.net - I ordered one and it's an excellent copy. It's format 0 so it will work on most DVD players. It was $39.99 plus $5.00 s/h. It comes with a labeled case and is very professional looking. I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the movie. I have been looking for this movie forever and this is the first professional copy I've found that works in U.S. players. I found a couple of people willing to make and send a copy but no one ever came through for me and the quality offered was questionable. I hope this helps everyone who loved this movie as a child and who has been looking for it. This was a great movie and I'm so happy that it's finally available.

Like others I saw Lost in the Desert as a child. It was the second feature, but the main film is long forgotten. I also remember many scenes very vividly though it must be nearly 30 years since I saw them: the snake, the father dropping flyers, cooking the eggs on a rock, and the bushmen cooking the dog, or so he thinks.

As a dreamy kid who longed to escape from my life (join the club), it was an exciting and terrifying film.

By a weird coincidence I just did an interview for a radio station in Johannesburg in which I mentioned how few South African films I had had the chance to see. I had no idea until now that Lost in The Desert was South African. I would love to see it again, and show it to my nephews who are 4 and 8.