When I was a kid I was huge fan of Errol Flynn movies but to me, Errol Flynn movies were The Charge of the Light brigade, the Adventures of Robin Hood, the Sea Hawk, They Died with their Boots on, etc. All of those were part of a package of old Warner Brothers films a local station showed in the afternoons. The newspaper said that an Errol Flynn movie I'd never heard of was going to be shown that night. I was all excited but my parents warned me that this film might not be like the ones I had seen. It was a film make late in his career when he was 'sick'. I wasn't even able to recognize him. I remember that he was playing a drunk and that someone was trying to get his character to guide them through dangerous country. That's all I remember about the film itself. Afterwards, my parents told that Flynn was, in fact dead and that, sadly, he drank too much and that was one of the reasons for his demise, that the films I remember were made a long time ago when he was young and handsome. As I've been going through his films in this project, I've been looking to see which film I saw all those nights ago and I've concluded it must be this one. Flynn is playing a drunk. He's middle aged and looks haggard and bloated. And halfway through, he accompanies Juliette Greco into the Congo to reunite her with the man she loves. This time, there was no reaction of shock and disillusionment. I knew of his personal history. I was more interested in the movie itself.
Most professional reviewers dismiss this film, citing it as more evidence of Flynn's deterioration, leading to his actual death a year later. (The film features the last of Flynn's 9 on-screen deaths: see if you can remember the first eight.) The director, John Huston, never thought much of it - or of his next one 'The Unforgiven', (1960). In both cases he had great difficulties making the films and, in both cases, I think the films are under-rated. I suspect that Huston just didn't like the films he had a hard time making. The cast all came down with dysentery or sunstroke except Flynn, who fortified himself against them with alcohol. According to a note on this site, Orson Welles claimed Flynn was mainlining heroin as well, although it also says that he "did his part in two days at a Paris studio" and "made his cameo appearance via a TV screen", so I'm not sure how he would know that.
The most interesting aspect of the film is that it's about ecological terrorism, decades before that became a thing. The real star of the film is Trevor Howard, playing an elephant lover who wants to stop their slaughter from poachers and big game hunters. When conventional means such as petitions and pleas to administrators fail, he takes to non-lethal forms of violence, such as firing buckshot into hunter's rear ends, scaring off herds by firing guns into the air and invading a society party full of amateur hunters to spank a lady hunter in front of her guests while his followers hold the guests at bay. His group includes Flynn as a former British officer who drinks because when his unit was captured during the way, he was the only survivor because he was the only one who talked, Eddie Albert as a free-lance cameraman looking for a story and Greco, former prostitute and current bar girl who fell for Howard. There's a lost of speech-making with Howard saying that it's not just about the elephants -it's about us. If we keep befouling our environment, we aren't going to make it, a very modern point of view for a 1950's film. What's interesting is that Huston was a big-game hunter himself. When asked about this he said "I never found an elephant big enough to justify the sin of killing one." So for him, it was about the elephants.
Another plot line was that Howard, who is said to "not be in sympathy with independence movements" was nonetheless working with a rebel leader played by Edric O'Connor, (actually a calypso singers from Trinidad but who bears a resemblance to Jomo Kenyatta), who thinks that Howard's crusade will give his movement some much-needed publicity. Later he sells out for some much-needed money from the hunters, guiding them to the herd and leading to the final confrontation with Howards small gang. (One wonders if the idea was to not offend the colonial powers, who represented a major part of the film's intended audience, by making independence movements look bad), That's where Flynn dies in a hail of bullets. Howard and the rest are taken prisoner and I expected the film to end at that point.
I found is an interesting and entertaining film to this point, (Malcolm Arnold's score seems an extension of his Oscar-winning work for 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' the previous year), but the ending made little sense to me. They release Howard and his gang and Howard announces he's going to a certain town to surrender himself to the authorities. They march off through a desert area and show up at the town exhausted, and Greco in a stretcher. She warned Howard that the police are just going to shoot him. He trudges over to them anyway. They decide not to shoot him. Then the whole group trudges through the town and back into the desert, destination unknown. Albert, whose camera contains pictures that would be evidence against the bad guys in any trial, tosses it aside as if he's rejecting what's on it. I've watched it twice and it didn't make any sense either time.
Nevertheless, this would have been a good film for Flynn to end his career on. Unfortunately, he had one more to go.
Most professional reviewers dismiss this film, citing it as more evidence of Flynn's deterioration, leading to his actual death a year later. (The film features the last of Flynn's 9 on-screen deaths: see if you can remember the first eight.) The director, John Huston, never thought much of it - or of his next one 'The Unforgiven', (1960). In both cases he had great difficulties making the films and, in both cases, I think the films are under-rated. I suspect that Huston just didn't like the films he had a hard time making. The cast all came down with dysentery or sunstroke except Flynn, who fortified himself against them with alcohol. According to a note on this site, Orson Welles claimed Flynn was mainlining heroin as well, although it also says that he "did his part in two days at a Paris studio" and "made his cameo appearance via a TV screen", so I'm not sure how he would know that.
The most interesting aspect of the film is that it's about ecological terrorism, decades before that became a thing. The real star of the film is Trevor Howard, playing an elephant lover who wants to stop their slaughter from poachers and big game hunters. When conventional means such as petitions and pleas to administrators fail, he takes to non-lethal forms of violence, such as firing buckshot into hunter's rear ends, scaring off herds by firing guns into the air and invading a society party full of amateur hunters to spank a lady hunter in front of her guests while his followers hold the guests at bay. His group includes Flynn as a former British officer who drinks because when his unit was captured during the way, he was the only survivor because he was the only one who talked, Eddie Albert as a free-lance cameraman looking for a story and Greco, former prostitute and current bar girl who fell for Howard. There's a lost of speech-making with Howard saying that it's not just about the elephants -it's about us. If we keep befouling our environment, we aren't going to make it, a very modern point of view for a 1950's film. What's interesting is that Huston was a big-game hunter himself. When asked about this he said "I never found an elephant big enough to justify the sin of killing one." So for him, it was about the elephants.
Another plot line was that Howard, who is said to "not be in sympathy with independence movements" was nonetheless working with a rebel leader played by Edric O'Connor, (actually a calypso singers from Trinidad but who bears a resemblance to Jomo Kenyatta), who thinks that Howard's crusade will give his movement some much-needed publicity. Later he sells out for some much-needed money from the hunters, guiding them to the herd and leading to the final confrontation with Howards small gang. (One wonders if the idea was to not offend the colonial powers, who represented a major part of the film's intended audience, by making independence movements look bad), That's where Flynn dies in a hail of bullets. Howard and the rest are taken prisoner and I expected the film to end at that point.
I found is an interesting and entertaining film to this point, (Malcolm Arnold's score seems an extension of his Oscar-winning work for 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' the previous year), but the ending made little sense to me. They release Howard and his gang and Howard announces he's going to a certain town to surrender himself to the authorities. They march off through a desert area and show up at the town exhausted, and Greco in a stretcher. She warned Howard that the police are just going to shoot him. He trudges over to them anyway. They decide not to shoot him. Then the whole group trudges through the town and back into the desert, destination unknown. Albert, whose camera contains pictures that would be evidence against the bad guys in any trial, tosses it aside as if he's rejecting what's on it. I've watched it twice and it didn't make any sense either time.
Nevertheless, this would have been a good film for Flynn to end his career on. Unfortunately, he had one more to go.