Safari (1956)

Instant Favorite.

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

SAFARI is a stock Hollywood adventure film set and made in Africa. The backdrop of the story is an interesting one that takes in the Mau Mau Uprising and includes a surprisingly vicious and adult opening sequence which works in the film's favour and is in actuality the best part of the movie: vivid, shocking, and a real hammer blow to the stomach.After this point the film goes down a gear and provides fitfully exciting viewing, although not without the problems associated with the big bucks productions of this era. One of these is Victor Mature as the heroic lead; his performance is entirely old-fashioned here and he looks like he's come straight from the 1940s. Janet Leigh is better as the love interest and disrobes for a couple of bathing scenes which would have been racy for the time.SAFARI also boasts the underrated Bermudan character actor Earl Cameron (SAPPHIRE) as the chief antagonist and very good he is too. The action bits are handled well and inevitably the scenery is a star in itself. A shame, then, that the overall experience is marred by footage of African creatures being shot which looks surprisingly realistic and makes me wonder if it was indeed done for real.

***SPOILERS*** While out in the African savanna gunning down rouge bull elephants great white hunter Ken Dufield, Victor Mature, gets the terrible news that his house or homestead outside of Nairobi and been attacked and burned down by a gang of Mau Mau's with his 12 year old son Kenny Jr, Chris Warbey,and the house help brutally murdered by the marauding terrorist gang. It just happened that Dufield was hired by big time British explorer and blue blood Sir Vincent Brampton, Roland Culver, to track this giant 550 pound man eating lion Atari who's been dining on the local native population! With the news that the Dufield household's trusting and faithful houseboy the 35 year old Jeroge,Earl Cameron, was an undercover Mau Mau general and was responsible for the carnage at the Dufield house and the death of little Kenny Big Ken Dufield is more interested in hunting Jeroge down and killing him then the man eating lion Atari that Sir Vincent hired him to kill!Walking a tightrope in trying to track down both Arati and Jeorge deep in Mau Mau country things get a bit more complicated for Dufield in that Sir Vincent brought his fiancée former showgirl Linda Latham, Janet Leigh, along for the ride! Being obligated to track down and shoot Atari Dufield at first sets his sights on the man eater before on General Jeroge. It was Sir Vincent who pulled strings to get Dufield's hunting license back which was by then lifted by the colonial government. That's when it was deemed, in starting up with the local Mau Mau's in trying to kill General Jeorge, that Dufield was a danger to the community. It's in fact Sir Vincent, in jumping or shooting off his gun, who makes thing far far worse by wounding the big cat and making him far more dangerous then he already was. As for Linda she had plans of her own in seeing the sights and almost getting herself killed in the process. That's when rowing in the dangerous African waters on a rubber dingy she got caught in a riptide that almost had her killed either by drowning or being eating by a bunch of hungry crocodiles! That's until Dufield came to her rescue shooting down, as well as getting his pants wet, the swarming crocks as they were about to close in on her.***SPOILERS*** It's after the man eater Atari is finally put away with a bullet, courtesy of Ken Dufield, between the eyes that it's reported that a major Mau Mau attack lead by General Jeroge has taken place when 200 interned Mau Mau's had broken out of a British detention camp outside of Nairobi. That finally gave Dufield the chance he's been itching for to get a shot at General Jeroge for murdering his son Kenny and the help at the Dufield house. Cowboy and Indian like ending with General or Chief Jeroge and his men, in the part of the Indians, getting by far the worst of it. With the calvary, in the person of the colonial troops, coming to the rescue in just the nick of time to save Dufield and whatever was still left, which included Linda, of his by now almost non existent safari.

Though Safari is hardly in the same league with such location jungle dramas as The African Queen or King Solomon's Mines, it has one thing going for it that I find amazing. It was actually shot in Kenya colony before Kenya became a nation and the Mau Mau rebellion as part of the plot while it was going on.Director Terrance Young and his principal cast of mostly Caucasian players were taking their lives in their hands just being there. A year after Safari was released to theaters, Ghana became the first African nation granted independence from its European colonizers. That paved the way for about 40 regime changes in Africa. Kenya in fact was one of the last in that group to be granted independence, a lot having to do with the Mau Mau Rebellion.The story is a standard one, Victor Mature is an Safari guide who takes on a job to guide Roland Culver and his party which consists of among others Janet Leigh and John Justin. Culver is after a rogue lion and Mature wants an excuse to get into the country where the Mau Maus are operating so he can get the guy who killed his son. Culver's got both a drinking and jealousy problem.I think anyone who's seen a couple of these films knows exactly where this one is going. Safari is a standard routine story, not worthy of the location cinematography or the events of the time. Still give these people a medal for filming in Kenya at that time.

I found this movie to be wonderful and not what I totally expected. I was looking for a movie about animals and was blessed with a film that fed all my senses. The scenery was breathtaking and clear. You even got an unexpected education from watching it. The actors were talented and did not take away from the scenery. It was a great blending of talent and location. This is not a documentary about animals but it could be used as a wonderful teaching tool on types of animals and how people relate to them. The movie had suspense and laughter throughout. even though was based on a time when women had a place to be and it was not in the bush country. I recommend this movie as a family movie.