Sat 11 Jul 2009
SAFARI. Columbia, 1956. Victor Mature, Janet Leigh, John Justin, Roland Culver, Orlando Martins, Earl Cameron. Director: Terence Young.
Pull out a chair and sit down a while. This movie is so filled with cliched situations and characters that if I were to list them all, you’d be here an awfully long time.
On second thought, maybe I should only tell about the main ones, and in so doing, leave it to you decide how much time and effort you might want to spend in tracking down a copy:
? An expert African guide (Victor Mature) thirsts for revenge against the leader (Earl Cameron) of a gang of rebellious Mau Maus who killed his family while he was away.
? His license revoked for his own good, Ken Duffield is hired anyway by a wealthy hunter (Roland Culver) who is used to getting his own way and knows how to pull the right strings.
? Joining them on the hunt for a notorious lion is Sir Vincent’s fiancée (Janet Leigh) who used to be a showgirl but is now intent on bagging bigger game.
? Also on the safari is Sir Vincent’s personal assistant (John Justin), a man whose weaknesses his employer sadistically digs his knives into at every chance he gets, figuratively speaking.
Dressed in tight-fitting jungle outfits during the day, and then in formal wear and the finest of negligees in the evening, Janet Leigh is present only as eye candy, for needing to be rescued when she wanders too far from camp, and for reawakening Victor Mature’s interest in life.
Sir Vincent’s role is more complicated: to be an obnoxious boor of an employer whose every whim is to be obeyed, immediately, and of course you know exactly how far that’s going to get him.
I think that about wraps it up. I hope not many animals were really shot and killed in the making of this rather mediocre movie, filmed in color on location in Kenya, or so I’m told. Quite possibly in its day it made a much greater impression.
July 11th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I liked this one better than you, but then I like African movies. Terence Young is one of the most uneven directors who ever screened a film, but I like his films anyway. He did a bit better when he helmed three of the first four Bond movies.
Still corny, but a bit better than this, is his Action of the Tiger with Van Johnson a two fisted American sailor who agrees to smuggle some kids out of Communist Yugoslavia. Herbert Lom is good as a colorful if less than trustworthy bandit and Sean Connery as Johnson’s drunken ship’s hand — basically the Walter Brennan role from To Have and To have Not.
But granted this one hits almost every cliche of the genre short of the lost city and or treasure. At least there are no guys in ape suits or really funny chimps.
But keep in mind most British and American movies since 1936 have to be approved by the British or American Humane Society. That doesn’t mean cast and crew didn’t go out and shoot animals on safari, but that there was no wholesale slaughter just for the sake of the movie. Of course stunt men and actors were fair game, but there were rules about animals ever since Errol Flynn turned Michael Curtiz in for the abuse of the horse back in Charge of the Light Brigade and shamed the Humane Society into putting a man on every film set involving animals. I don’t know if they went on foreign shoots like this one, but they were fairly strict over all.
July 11th, 2009 at 11:03 pm
Steve
Forgot to mention that the business about Leigh in formal wear and filmy negligees at night is actually fairly accurate about many safaris.
Dating back to the 19th century it wasn’t unusual to make some of the safaris and hunting expeditions pretty lavish. When the Tsar went buffalo hunting with Buffalo Bill he opened a case of champagne every time he got a buffalo so Cody and his pals made sure every shot the Tsar fired was a bullseye.
It wasn’t unusual for dinner on safari to be formal for men and women with fine china, crystal, and expensive silverware. It wasn’t camping out as we remember it, more like roughing it at the Ritz.
July 12th, 2009 at 12:53 am
David
When you say “At least there are no guys in ape suits or really funny chimps,” you may be recalling a long discussion you and I and a couple of others had following my review of JUNGLE JIM IN THE FORBIDDEN LAND a short while ago:
https://mysteryfile.com/blog/?p=1172
That movie was bad, which did not then, nor does it now, preclude it from being entertaining, although being a pre-teenager might help. I’ll stick to calling this one mediocre, but I will concede that that may be a minority opinion, now that I’ve read the comments on IMDB, which like yours, are mostly favorable.
It’s just that whenever a scene began, I knew exactly what was going to happen next. To the credit of the actors, they all played the parts they were assigned extremely well.
And of course it’s also possible that what might be called cliches today were fresh and interesting the first few times they appeared in print or on the screen.
We also talked about animals that were portrayed as being killed on the screen in regard to the Jungle Jim movie. I hope it didn’t happen in SAFARI, but since it was filmed on location, it might have. If any animals died, though, I’d like to think that archive footage from real hunts was used. Maybe not, and I find the possibility disturbing. Obviously I’d be no fun to be taken along on a safari!
But I also do not enjoy murder mysteries, either in print or on film, in which the level of blood and gore rises too high; in which children are put in danger; in which cats, dogs or other pets are mutilated or killed; and there is one author whose books I no longer read in which the hero’s grandparents were tortured and killed, just to get at him in a spectacularly gruesome way. Stuff like that happens. You can’t deny it. For me, though, I find no entertainment value in it, and as I get older, I find myself feeling more that way, not less.
As for Janet Leigh in “formal wear and filmy negligees at night,” I wasn’t clear where I was going with that sentence. I didn’t mean to suggest that it wasn’t an accurate portrayal of high society safaris. It’s just that Janet Leigh was a fine actress, and in SAFARI they didn’t give her anything else to do. That’s my real complaint, right there.
— Steve
July 12th, 2009 at 5:30 am
Sometimes I’m in the mood for these old corny Hollywood films and SAFARI would fit the bill nicely. And Mature’s acting is always a hoot. He famously said “I’m not an actor—and I’ve got sixty-four films to prove it!”
July 12th, 2009 at 8:42 am
Steve
i probably should have mentioned I was a Victor Mature fan so Safari had something going for it from the top for me — and any film that puts Janet Leigh in a filmy negligee is fine even it wastes her other talents.
The ultra violence depends on the book and the violence. The cartoonish violence of Mickey Spillane doesn’t bother me nor does the realistic violence of John D. MacDonald, but gratuitous blood and gore unaccompanied by any real literary skill turns me off fast.
I suppose what I’m talking about is the “poetry of violence.” And as you have mentioned before, like you I avoid “children in danger” books and films like the plague with only rare exceptions like The Window or Rohan O’Grady’s Let’s Kill Uncle (good film too).
And even in films there is a difference between the violence in a kung fu movie or a horror film and a film like Raging Bull or Good Fellas. Tarantino movies with the almost operatic violence, or even Peckinpah’s Wild Bunch don’t bother me since it is almost ballet, but more realistic violence can turn me away — in books and on screen.
I’m an animal lover, and no hunter, but I have to admit I don’t mind reading about or watching fictional hunting — maybe because it has been the subject of so many good books and movies. And keep in mind too, shooting actual animals in real scenes is a costly and time consuming business, so likely when it’s a montage, or not a plot point it is archival footage, and if it is staged for the film then no animal was killed.
Also what you see in many films from the period of Safari is killing that was filmed for the movie, but of animals being culled or put down — rogue elephants and the like. If the animal had to be killed anyway it might as well serve a purpose rather than just control population or to solve problems. There were probably more rules about what you could shoot and when then than there are in some areas now.
Other than the horses injured before the Humane Society began protecting them I can think of only one film where an animal was actually killed on set, and that is in the silent Tarzan with Elmo Lincoln. A lioness went wild on set and tried to kill the actresses playing Jane and her maid, and Lincoln killed the animal saving them. The scene is still in the movie, though like much real violence it is less “shocking” than a staged scene might have been.
I don’t know about Safari, but I would guess most of the safari footage is stock taken from other films and from documentary footage. If there is a Humane Society stamp on the credits then you can be sure it was monitored. They were very strict and harder to get around than the censors.
And you have to keep in mind in Africa the conservationist movement was made up of ex white hunters and reformed poachers as much as animal lovers. A case of set a thief to catch a thief.
Granted Safari comes from a period when big game hunting still had a cachet of glamor and the whole Hemingway/Ruark thing, but I know that the Humane Society had rules and regulations about what could be shown and done on screen regarding animals, and they enforced that “no animals were harmed in the making of this movie” fairly strictly.
There is an irony though since African movies bother you, yet you are a western fan (as I am), but in all fairness in westerns filmed before 1936 more animals were cruelly killed and maimed than all the African films ever made. It was the cruel treatment of horses in Charge of the Light Brigade’s famous charge that prompted Errol Flynn to go to the Humane Society and they in turn to begin policing the use of animals in films.
I don’t know it is true, but I’ve heard the famous Oklahoma Land Run scene in William S. Hart’s Tumbleweeds was a virtual slaughter of stunt men and horses.
Still, Steve, you’re a Robert Parker fan and violence in films and books bothers you? Oh well, to quote the old Emerson line “I am great I contain contradictions.” Or as someone once said, consistency is only a virtue in servants and cake batter. I confess my contradictions.
David
Yeah, sometimes these corny films like this are what you want — not art, not genius, just competent well popped movie theater mind popcorn.
But while Mature is no thespian, I do suggest you check out the Robe, where he plays the slave Demitrius. If you watch it fairly you will grant that he acts the toga off Richard Burton and every one else in the film with a simple honest performance. His Doc Holiday is brilliant in Ford’s My Darling Clementine — especially the scene when he finishes the Shakesperian scene begun by frightened actor Alan Mowbray. He is also pretty good in Fury at Furnace Creek, a remake of John Ford’s Four Men and a Prayer. He is also very good in Kiss of Death, Violent Saturday, and Savage Wilderness, and I would argue that sometimes a movie star does what he does better than an “actor” could.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:09 am
In Comment #5 David mentions the cruel treatment of horses in Charge of the Light Brigade and Tumbleweeds. More than once while reading accounts of the making of westerns and the memories of stuntmen, I’ve noted the practice of stringing wire or ropes across the path of horses to make them fall while in full gallop. Hundreds or maybe even thousands of horses must have been injured or had their legs broken. Which of course meant they had to be put down. I say maybe thousands because the western especially was so popular in the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s, with thousands being made and many showing horses falling with stuntmen hitting the ground, etc. Just about all stuntmen had several serious injuries and broken bones, with some deaths of course.
July 12th, 2009 at 11:46 am
David
You say “The ultra violence depends on the book and the violence. The cartoonish violence of Mickey Spillane doesn’t bother me nor does the realistic violence of John D. MacDonald, but gratuitous blood and gore unaccompanied by any real literary skill turns me off fast.”
I said “But I also do not enjoy murder mysteries, either in print or on film, in which the level of blood and gore rises too high…”
We don’t disagree at all!
I don’t have a line carved in stone, but if a book or movie crosses it, the solution is simple. I stop reading or watching it.
In spite of anything I’ve said that might have suggested otherwise, SAFARI never came close to crossing any such line, nor has Robert B. Parker in any of his books — nor Mickey Spillane or John D. MacDonald, not ever.
Some of the so-called neo-noir books that come out recently have crossed that line, but since I’ve never finished one, you’ll never find any of them mentioned on this blog. There are a good many movies, mostly recent ones — and you probably know which ones I mean with my mentioning titles — that are in the same category.
They each have their fans, both books and movies, but they have their own fanzines, websites and blogs, and they’d be bored to death with the books and movies that are talked about here. So be it.
And as for African movies, no, they don’t bother me. You shouldn’t take what I said about SAFARI and think I’m tarring them all with the same feathers. My reasons for calling SAFARI mediocre had very little to do with animals and how they were treated.
In fact, allowing movie-goers in 1956 the chance to see wild animals in their natural surroundings in full color, rather than caged up in large city zoos, probably did more a lot more good than harm.
In comparison with what when on making early westerns, with the treatment of horses that you and Walker describe, you’re right, I can’t disagree with you when you say “…in westerns filmed before 1936 more animals were cruelly killed and maimed than all the African films ever made.”
History is history. You learn from it, or you don’t.
— Steve
July 12th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
Steve
I just got the feeling — apparently wrong — from your comments on this and the Jungle Jim film — that the violence against animals in African films bothered you. Sorry if I jumped to a conclusion.
Perhaps the difference is that the African films are about killing animals whereas the slaughter in the westerns is never seen by us. It’s a result of the film, but not part of the plot.
The contraption Walker mentions for tripping horses was known as a “flying W” I think, and killed and maimed many a horse on film. To his credit Errol Flynn watched one day’s filming, saw what was going on, and headed for the offices of the Humane Society. The story is mentioned in several books, most notably in David Niven’s Bring On the Empty Horses, which is taken from the direction given by Michael Curtiz while filming Charge of the Light Brigade.
Again, like you, Steve, I feel no compunction about putting aside a book if the violence bothers me or strikes me wrong. I’m bothered less by violence itself at times though than the feeling it is exploitative.
The violence, gore, and blood in Clive Barker’s books for instance doesn’t bother me because Barker is a good writer and not doing it for exploitation.
I can’t always say that for Stephen King though, an excellent and gifted storyteller, but one who descends to the age of a twelve year old with a horror comic too often for my taste. I know I’m in a minority, but some of his books like Gerald’s Game and Thinner are just unpleasant and for no real reason other than a juvenile desire to gross out the reader. As you say it is a line that once crossed can end the enjoyment of a book flat.
In his very good book on the horror genre King mentions in some detail how he dislikes the classic Val Lewton horror film The Cat People, which he faults for scenes of tension that he claims don’t pay off, because a noise in the night turns out to be a bus or a death is shown only in shadows.
I would argue that is exactly what I don’t like about King — that need to string out the gore and grue like the innards in an EC comic by Graham Ingels. That’s fine in its place, but frankly it bores me. I’d much rather a writer or film maker provided me with a genuine frisson than all the tiresome gore ever filmed.
On the other hand the absurd violence of say a Tarantino film can be so over the top it is no more disturbing than the fate of Wily Coyote in a Road Runner movie.
That said, having unfortunately witnessed some real violence, or at least its aftermath, I’ve never seen anything in the most realistic film ever made that comes anywhere near the real thing. Once in a while they get the emotional impact right, but seldom the physical reality. Most real violence is over while the actors are still saying their lines before it begins.
July 12th, 2009 at 10:26 pm
David
We’re saying the same thing in terms of, for lack of a better word, “gratuitous” violence in books or films, with everyone’s definition of gratuitous never being the same as anyone else’s.
It’s been a long time since I’ve read Stephen King, for pretty much the reason you’ve just explained. But Clive Barker’s books have never appealed to me, not even to start reading one, so our lines are obviously drawn in different places already.
But I’ll try again with African movies, which you define thusly: “African films are about killing animals,” a statement which I don’t quite agree with, but if you say “African safari films,” then we’re getting closer.
But here’s the nutshell, when you say you got the feeling “that the violence against animals in African films bothered you…”
Not quite. It’s the actual killing of African animals, just for the sake of making a movie, that’s what bothers me, or it would if it ever really happened.
Here’s the relevant sentence from my original review: “I hope not many animals were really shot and killed in the making of this rather mediocre movie, filmed in color on location in Kenya…”
Mediocre because of the story line, or the lack of a non-predictable one. Even if the story had been better, there’s every reason to believe that I’d added a line expressing the same hope, that not many animals were really shot and killed in the making of it.
— Steve
July 12th, 2009 at 11:58 pm
Though I like Safari I don’t really disagree it is mediocre. I just didn’t mind the cliches with that cast, and I like the general theme and setting. But then I even liked the one they did with George Montgomery only because at a distance he looked enough like Stewart Granger they could recycle most of the footage of King Solomon’s Mines.
I’m pretty sure no wholesale slaughter of animals for the purpose of making the film has happened since 1936. The Humane Society really did wield a lot of power over the studios because of their large membership and the bad publicity they could conjure up.
I can understand you’re not caring for Clive Barker, my only point was that he can and does write well, and though he can be disturbing it’s seldom only for the sake of being disturbing. King too often reminds me of the kid in class who always had something gross in his lunch box he just had to share with everyone.
I will defend a movie or book or writer I like, but I’m never bothered that someone else doesn’t care for it. What you like or don’t like is subjective and there are writers that however talented don’t appeal to me for one reason or the other. For instance I can’t warm to Jonathan Kellerman. He’s certainly not a bad writer, and I even liked his The Butcher’s Theater, but Alex Delaware just doesn’t appeal.
I don’t much care for James Patterson, Ridley Pearson, Michael Connolly, or Richard North Patterson, but I don’t think any of them are bad writers — some of them have even written at least one book I liked.
That said, there are some awful writers who appear regularly on the best seller list (always were I suppose), especially in the general thriller genre. I haven’t thrown many books across the room in recent years (they tend to be too thick these days), but not long ago a Brad Thor novel made the trip at the point he had a midget Arab terrorist escape danger by riding off on a big dog.
It was all right back when Chester Gould did it with shyster lawyer Jerome Trohs and his St. Bernard, but in the 21rst century in a more or less straight thriller it was more than worthy of the Dorothy Parker treatment: ie, “This book should not be put aside lightly, it should be thrown with great force.”
January 17th, 2012 at 12:06 pm
Safari 1956…with Victor Mature/Janet Leigh…
I’d love a copy of this…will pay!