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Sadly Over-hyped

Pretty Good

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

When I first saw "Sands of the Kalahari," I figured it was inspired by Robert Audrey's "African Genesis: A Personal Investigation into the Animal Origins and Nature of Man." Audrey made the case that man had evolved from Australopithecus africanus, a violent, murderous primate. His book soon became all the rage. However, "African Genesis" was published in 1961, whereas the novel, "The Sands of the Kalahari" by William Patrick Mulvihill, was published in 1960. On the other hand, the theory that man had evolved from killer apes had originally been proposed by Raymond Dart. Audrey interviewed Dart and wrote an article about Dart's theories in "The Reporter" in 1955, so perhaps that was Mulvihill's inspiration after all.In the movie, a group of passengers are on a small airplane that crashes in the middle of the desert in southern Africa. They manage to find shelter, water, and food in a mountainous area, which also is inhabited by a troop of baboons. One of the characters, O'Brian (Stuart Whitman), who has a hunting rifle, decides that his chances of survival will improve if he wipes out the competition, which includes not only the baboons, but also the other survivors, except for Grace (Susannah York), who also functions as something worth competing for.One of the men he runs off manages to cross the desert and make it to civilization. He returns in a helicopter to rescue those who have survived, but O'Brian refuses to go with them, presumably because he would be tried for murder. He eventually runs out of bullets. As the baboons become more menacing, he decides to fight their leader with only his bare hands, eventually killing the baboon with a rock he managed to grab. Earlier in the movie, the point had been made that the leader of the troop was the one that got first access to all the females. After he kills his foe, other baboons begin to approach in a manner suggesting that they recognize him as their new leader. In fact, we suspect the approaching baboons are females. Will O'Brian indulge? The second time I saw this movie was on the Late Show. As the female baboons closed in around O'Brian, some joker in the television studio played the Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan yell. For that matter, before Tarzan met Jane, did he indulge?The movie is a little dated now. When it first came out, the idea that man was a killer ape was new. As a result, the author of the screenplay probably felt it necessary to have several characters drive home the point that man is in many ways like the baboons. Today, when the expression "alpha male" has become commonplace, if not trite, such repetitive, explicit comparisons to the baboons now seem overdone. Also, since the group has plenty of water, food, and shelter, the idea that several of them, and not just O'Brian, would start thinking and acting like baboons after only two days is a stretch.

After the heights of Zulu, it is astonishing the depths that the producer, director and star of that film sank with this woebegone effort. A random bunch of uninteresting people jump on a small plane in the middle of the night for no rational reason and when it crashes start behaving in irrational ways. The acting is phoned in, the script is dire, the direction almost non-existent and the gratuitous slaughter of the local wildlife leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Nobody could be in the slightest bit interested in the fate of any of these "characters", some of whom just disappear from proceedings with no explanation of their fate. This movie deserves it's obscurity.

Running virtually parallel with "Flight of the Phoenix", "Sands of the Kalahari" rates ahead by a propeller in my opinion thanks mainly to the superb ensemble cast ably led by Stuart Whitman and Stanley Baker. The plot is uncomplicated concerning the survivors of a plane crash deep in the isolated Kalahari who must survive the ravages of the desert, its occupants, and themselves.Davenport is a particularly nasty thug, the ubiquitous 'Mr Negativity' of a crisis situation, York desperately trying to deflect unwanted attentions, and Bikel offers the calming influence as the man who might be capable of engineering an improbable escape. Not too sure whether it's Whitman or Baker's picture per se, nevertheless, neither seems overshadowed despite Baker's producer credit and regular helmsman Cy Raker Endfield in the director's seat.Searing heat and parched throats translates to the viewer, it's often tense despite the two hour run-time, and Endfield builds modest suspense out of limited material. Worth a look if you're intrigued by the "stranded" stories watching various personalities disintegrate, or galvanise, under survival stress.

I finally found a copy of this movie on DVD, www.onlyclassicmovies.com just $20 and you are in business.Hope this helps out if you are looking for this impossible to find movie. The picture looks like it was recorded from a VHS but who cares, the quality is totally watchable and the sound is perfect. It has been 41 years since I saw this flick and it's even better than I remember. This is one of five movies that I saw as a kid that really changed my life. The other four are Planet of the Apes, Vanishing Point, Easy Rider, and Kellys Heroes. None of these movies are high budget or winning academy awards for acting, but like Sands of the Kalahari, these films had a magic, it's like the planets aligned perfect in all aspects of the entire movie, it just becomes unparalleled and helps form your life. I spent 6yrs in the army, rode a Harley across the United States, went on safari in South Africa, owned a 70 Dodge Challenger, and was bitten by my dads monkey, swear to God.