Description
In the 19th century,during the German colonial rule,railway engineer Robert Adamson arrives in the Kilimanjaro Region to finish building a railroad through hostile territory.
Killers of Kilimanjaro is a 1959 British CinemaScope adventure film directed by Richard Thorpe and starring Robert Taylor, Anthony Newley, Anne Aubrey and Donald Pleasence for Warwick Films.
The movie was originally known as Adamson of Africa.
Main cast
Robert Taylor as Robert Adamson
Anthony Newley as Hooky Hook
Anne Aubrey as Jane Carlton
Donald Pleasence as Captain
Grégoire Aslan as Ben Ahmed
Allan Cuthbertson as Sexton
Martin Benson as Ali
Orlando Martins as Chief
John Dimech as Pasha
Martin Boddey as Gunther
Production
Warwick Films had made three films in Africa, Safari, Zarak and Odongo. The movie was announced in 1956 and inspired by the story of the Tsavo maneaters recounted in the 1955 book African Bush Adventures by J.A. Hunter and Daniel P. Mannix.
The screenplay was originally by Peter Viertel, who had worked on The African Queen, and written a novel of the experiences called White Hunter, Black Heart. Alan Ladd, who had made three films for Warwick, was the announced as male lead – it was meant to be part of a six-picture deal between Ladd and Warwick that also included The Man Inside and It’s Always Four O’Clock. In the final event Ladd made no further films for Warwick – the lead role went to Robert Taylor.
Filming took place on location in Moshi Tanganyika, the same location used for Mogambo and Tarzan’s Greatest Adventure.
Release
The film’s title was changed to Killers of Kilimanjaro. This upset Chief Thomas Marealle of the Chagga tribe, on whose lands the film was shot, and he made an official complaint. Mount Kilimanjaro lies about 125 kilometres (78 mi) west of Tsavo in Tanzania.
Directed by Richard Thorpe
Produced by John R Sloane
executive
Irving Allen
Albert R. Broccoli
Screenplay by John Gilling
Based on story by Cyril Hume and Richard Maibaum
from book African Bush Adventures by J Hunter
Starring Robert Taylor, Anthony Newley
Music by William Alwyn
Cinematography Ted Moore
Edited by Geoffrey Foot
Production company Warwick Films
Distributed b y Columbia Pictures
Release date 1959
Running time 91 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
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!
