User Reviews

Rather than the misleading title, the name on the credits as director of the reliably uninspired Richard Thorpe warns you what to expect from this lacklustre copy of 'King Solomon's Mines' with regular cuts away to travelogue shots of zebras, giraffes, crocodiles and so on.

Poor Earl Cameron is required to wear feathers and bones as a witch doctor. But Anthony Newley's 'funny' Englishman is if anything equally demeaning, and Robert Taylor's condescending treatment of him endears you to neither.

Robert Taylor arrives in Africa to survey a route from Mombasa to Lake Victoria for a railroad. Of course British policy against the slave trade has some of the locals up in arms and the fact that Taylor makes it clear his company will not be permitting the transport of slaves makes him a few enemies, chiefly Gregoire Aslan the big honcho among Arab slave traders.

Taylor's got a friend in the enemy camp though. Young John Dimech came over on the boat with Taylor and he's Aslan's son, recently educated in an English prep school where he's taken in some western ideas. He hitches a ride with Taylor, Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey on the surveying expedition. Aubrey is along to locate her father and fiancé who've disappeared into the interior.

One of the previous reviewers remarked about the good location photography in East Africa that highlights Killers of Kilimanjaro. It's my contention, expressed elsewhere in other reviews that ever since King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen, phony backlot jungles were just not going to do for the movie going public.

The story is not as good as either of those other films, but Killers of Kilimanjaro is good routine action adventure film and the cast give a good account of themselves. Anthony Newley has some funny moments as Taylor's tenderfoot assistant and Allan Cuthbertson for me stands out in the cast as Aubrey's dissolute fiancé.

A British adventure; A story set during German colonial rule of Tanganyika in 19th Century East Africa. It is about an American engineer who arrives in the Mount Kilimanjaro region to finish building a railroad but he is consistently beset by hostile natives and wild beasts. This film was inspired by the story of the Tsavo maneating lions recounted in the African Bush Adventures by J.A. Hunter and Daniel P. Mannix. This is a colourful action adventure with some moments of mild suspense and specks of good humour and features wildlife in attractive locations in Moshi, Tanganyika. Robert Taylor plays the indefatigable hero with panache and grace, faced with an assortment of tribulations, including wild animals, cannibals, slave traders. Anne Aubrey plays a rather bland love interest providing no real spark and so it relies on the landscape and exotic culture for diversion. Maltese actor John Dimech ("Lawrence of Arabia") gives delightful support as a young Arab boy. The story is straightforward, depicting indigenous races as unenlightened, merciless or plain greedy, and Anthony Newley is portrayed as an emasculated Brit who regains some self-respect. The romance is underplayed which gives it a monotone feel. All in all, it is a film that progresses to a hectic pace though it has some old-fashioned morals.

Robert Taylor is in Africa to build a railroad to Lake Tanganyika. Problems arise when a group of Germans also arrive to build a railroad and a local baddie decides to do what he can to sabotage Taylor's efforts.

"Killers of Kilamanjaro" is not a bad film at all. It has some handsome cinematography that is far better than the average Tarzan film. However, it also is amazingly ordinary despite this--and features characters that are pretty bland and one-dimensional.

You know the film will have problems when you see that Robert Taylor is cast in the lead. Now he was a fine actor and I like his films (that's why I watched it) BUT it's all about him trying to build a railroad for the British in Africa and Taylor is about as British as Bratwurst! This casting just didn't make sense to me--and I am sure the audiences felt the same. As for the rest, they weren't bad but had an amazing capacity for ordinariness--most likely because the script was just okay. Films like "King Solomon's Mines" (not the abomination with Richard Chamberlain) make this look pretty dull by comparison.

Taylor, an engineer, has been nominated for completing the first African railroad, to run from Mombasa to Lake Victoria in East Africa...

Taylor ends his journey with his sidekick, Anthony Newley (providing a sort of Sancho Panza character) and comes up with a young English girl (the red-haired Anne Aubrey) who is attempting to find her lost father and her fiancé who have disappeared in the jungle...

Though warned of the obstacles of the journey, Aubrey insists on going along, and soon falls in love with Taylor... Aubrey discovers that her father is dead and that her fiancé has become an alcoholic, but, of course, Taylor repays the two losses...

Gregoire Aslan portrays the magnificent enemy, an Arab slaver who wants to get the railroad to make easier the transportation of his slaves...

Photographed in Tanganyka and England with fascinating shots of a variety of wildlife, "Killers of Kilimanjaro" is an old-fashioned safari adventure full of action and wild animals...

Taylors performance is like that in the Valey of the Kings - somehow monotone. But may be that is how he had to act in his role. Perhaps Stewart Granger would have been the better choice as in the inimitable King Solomons Mines, which is the ultimate unrivaled Africa-adventure-film. The setting in Killers… is beautiful, apparently not Arizona. Watusha land? I did not come across it travelling through Tanzania, Kenia, Uganda. It is a pity that Col. Pattersons Ghost and Darkness story was not filmed in the fifties or forties when they knew how to make films. Today too quickly a lack or tiredness of brainwork is replaced by computer work or stupid overaction-action. The opening of the film was made in Old town Sansibar! Thank You for that. Taylor looks as if he had a problem with alcohol. Where did the lady get the hairdressing after days of bush trekking? The train was also too modern. Slave trading in Eastern Africa? Yes! From, 17. till 19. century Sansibar under the domain of the Sultan of Oman was a center of East-African slave trading. But it was pushed back more and more from Britain and Germany although slave trading was still holding a stand around the Red Sea till the middle of the 20. century. In Saudi-Arabia slavery was abolished in 1963 publicly, but it is still existing in secret. Slave trading came to a renaissance in the 1970s during the Sudan conflict since the girls from Sri Lanka and the Philipines are not longer ready to go to the Arabs in the needed numbers. The crash of Somalia 1990 revived the slave trading again. Especially the Sudan is a fortress for the misuse of the black people. Slave trading is an abhorrible crime to humanity. Any country which allows this practice shows a backwardness which should not be tolerated by the family of nations. Of course it is pure accident that all those countries are Islamic. In Sansibar slavery was abolished by the Brits in 1897. But back to the film: That German officials are working together with slave traders to attack a harmless group of anglo-saxons has nothing to do with historic facts. But who else could play the villains. The German troop commanders of the Eastern-African army corps were in high esteem among the local askaris. How else could their faithful support be explained which gave so much nuts to crack to the superior British forces in the WWI battle field of Eastern Africa. Small numbers of German led Askaris with insufficient supply and poor weaponry withstood superior British forces. When they surrendered the British commanders allowed the officers to retain their weapons as a mark of respect for their most remarkable achievement. The allied casualty list was10 times longer than those of the enemy although the Brits outnumbered the enemy 10 to 1. The film shows the opposite. 200 German led Askaris with guns are defeated by 3 or 4 Brits who have only the support of some spearmen. That for a film 14 years after WW II? A little disturbing. English travelers of the time when Tanzania was a German colony highly paid respect to the German efficiency of colonial government, like The Cape-to-Cairo EwartGrogan, the British Hemingway as the Sunday Telegraph called him. That sort of exaggerating anglo-saxon heroism at the cost of the opponents reduces the worth of such films. Entertainment yes, but the art of entertainment is much bigger when keeping to facts. But you have to work hard sometimes to make facts interesting. Films that serve clichés are primitive and something to forget quickly. The film shows also why so many wild animals were exterminated until the fifties. Whenever a rhino or a lion shows up too close to a white mans gun it is gunned down. Great achievement of these white heroes, indeed. by the way Kilimanjaro was till 1918 the highest mountain on "German" territory!

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!

ROBERT TAYLOR nearing the end of his career was still making robust adventure films and fitting the roles as well as he did earlier in time. Here he's the safari leader assigned to building a railroad and dealing with treacherous convicts and restless natives while venturing to take a trip through dangerous Watusha territory.

There's plenty of colorful location scenery to create a vivid picture of the long trek and the usual number of obstacles thrown into his path before he and his group reach their destination. It's a story that borrows heavily from the outline of "King Solomon's Mines" without delving into the background of its characters but just directed in routine adventure style by director Richard Thorpe, who had once guided Taylor through several of his MGM films in the old days.

ANTHONY NEWLEY lends breezy support as Taylor's bumbling assistant but the accent is not on the supporting cast of humans but the many African animals that are viewed along the way. Along for the search for her father is pretty ANNE AUBREY in a purely decorative role.

Summing up: Routine safari adventure is enhanced by some handsome location photography and the many wild animals spotted during the trek.

Robert Taylor plays an engineer commissioned to build the first East African railway, who sets out from Mombasa with Anthony Newley and Anne Aubrey as Hooky and Jane to find the best route and hopefully find word to the disappearence of Jane's father and fiance who were previously involved with the same venture. The best light comedy/drama role ever for Newley, Aubrey looking as glamourous as ever and Taylor adding the Hollywood gloss. Dated but glorious. Paul Goodhead - President of The Anthony Newley Appreciation Society.

It's an hybrid of many things, this - and all set in the not very politically correct scenario of late 19th century colonial Africa. Robert Taylor is "Adamson" - a railway engineer tasked with completing a dangerous stretch of track between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. No mean feat as he must face duplicity from some, slave-trading, locals with vested interests and some hostility from the natives whose land he must cross. Adding to his difficulties, he is engaged by "Jane" (a pretty unremarkable Anne Aubrey) to try to track down her engineer brother - a man charged with the same task earlier, but who has disappeared. It's a solid boy's own adventure story this with plenty of stereotypes of the time peppering a tale that has little jeopardy but just enough action and beasties to sustain it for ninety minutes. The one thing I did struggle with was the curious casting of Anthony Newley as his assistant "Hooky" but otherwise this is just a sort of "King Solomon's Mines" meets "Northwest Frontier" type of film that lauded the pioneering spirit of empire at a time when that's what cinema audiences wanted. It's entirely forgettable fayre, and very much of a time long gone - in just about every fashion.

Taylor leads safari to finish railway line through hostile African tribal region, dangerous animal encounters and saboteurs. Action is at a premium till last 15mins which is a free for all battle (pretty entertaining) but what goes before is some fairly yawnsome fish out of water comedy relief with Anthony Hawley as Taylor's sidekick, and no chemistry (blink and you miss it) romance between Taylor and leading lady. Lots of animal wildlife stock footage and lots and lots of walking about. Taylor is a bit one note but ok as ex-army type who is unfazed by anything that crosses his path.

He's a man of action who doesn't flinch even when spears are thrown between his legs!😂. Not a badly made film , but just with a mechanical script, and cardboard characters.

In a word DULL.🤔😀

This is a clicked version of all the African adventure films that came out in the fifties.It might have had a chance with a youthful leading man.Robert Taylor looks an old man at 48 though it does not seem slightly risible to the writers that a romance with a 21 year old Anne Aubrey is somewhat unlikely.Well photographed scenery is about the only bright spot.Assuming it is not stock shots.

Adventure and moving drama/action movie with nice mood, it is a rich, robust and colorful picture, a hell-for-leather stuff. And is set in the 19th century, during the German colonial rule. Victorian railway builder Robert Adamson (Robert Taylor) adventures off into the kitted out with lovable native urchin (Dimech), pretty white lady in distress, Jane Carlton (Anne Aubrey), plus comic relief (Anthony Newley). Adamson finds out that his planned route for the new railroad is passing through some very perilous and unfriendly native tribal areas as well as a competing German railroad company will cause him trouble and prevent him from finishing his railroad. Africa as you've never seen it!. A thousand thrilling African adventures !. More savage than most savage Africa!. See sinister assault of the deadly crocodiles ! Ruthles terror of the slave traders!. Bull elephant attack!. Flamed! Haired beauty!.

Exciting, thrilling picture set in Mombasa in the turbulent Africa during colonial period. It is a rousing, moving, and stirring tale , but rough-edged fare. A compendium of gorgeous outdoors, intrigue, imperialism , colonialism and provocation, regarding African natives, wildlife, feminism, and anything else. The movie is both incident packed and deadly slow: a Richard Thorpe speciality. Evelyn Waugh crossed paths with the production in Kenya, an encounter he described in ¨A tourist in Africa¨. Among the rush of Anglo-American oddities from circa 1960 this encomium for the British Empire at its moment of maximum desintegration from a past splendor is in a class by itself. Stars Robert Taylor playing in his usual style as a railway engineer who arrives in the Kilimanjaro Region to finish building a railroad through hostile territory. He's well accompanied by a pretty good support cast, such as: Anthony Newley, Anne Aubrey, Grégoire Aslan, Allan Cuthbertson, Martin Benson, Orlando Martins, Harry Baird and Donald Pleasence.

One of several lively, all-action, color de luxe adventures produced by Britain's Warwick films, in this production company usually played Robert Taylor, Alan Ladd and Victor Mature as stars in the late Fifties .Warwick was set up by Irving Allen and Albert R. Broccoli, and its main purpose was that it offered an European lifeline to fading Hollywood star. This picture was one of many from Warwick Films which were shot quickly and consequently released, such as: 'The Bandit of Zhobe' (1956) with Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, 'The Man Inside' (1958) with Jack Palance, Anita Ekberg, 'Tank Force!' aka 'No Time To Die' (1958) with Victor Mature, Anthony Newley and 'Killers of Kilimanjaro' (1959). The ambient of the country at the time is pretty well shown accompanied by an atmospheric and brilliant cinematography in Technicolor by Ted Moore. As well as thrilling and evocative musical score by William Alwyn and musical director by regular Muir Matheson. Being shot on location in Nairobi National Park, and Nairobi, Kenya for tribal village and exteriors and Shepperton Studios, Shepperton, Surrey, Inglaterra, Reino Unido for interiors. Lavishly produced by the notorious producers Irving Allen and the famous Albert R. Broccoli who subsequently to finance the successful James Bond series . The motion picture produced by Warwick along with Columbia Pictures was decently directed by Richard Thorpe. He was an ordinary Hollywood crafsman who made routine studio fare until 1950s when he was given more major assignment. He then made various big-budget productions financed by Pando S. Bergman among his best known films are all the MGM Tarzans following his arrival at the studio in 1935 and a series of swashbuckling adventures in the early 1950s featuring Robert Taylor , the most successful of these were three swashbucklers made in England as ¨Knights of Round Table , Ivanhoe and Quentin Durward¨ . Thorpe was an expert on all kind of genres as Western as ¨Vengeance valley , Wild horse , Under Montana skies and Last challenge¨ but his specialty resulted to be adventures as ¨Prisoner of Zenda , The prodigal , Challenge to Lassie , Malaya , Tarzan's secret treasure ,Tarzan escapes , Tarzan finds a son¨ and Musicals as ¨Fun in Acapulco , Rainbow over Broadway , The prince student¨ and his biggest money-maker to date was ¨The great Caruso¨ and his last big box-office hit was ¨Presley' Jailhouse Rock¨ . He also worked briefly in television before retiring in 1968 , his last film was ¨The last challenge'. Rating. 6/10. Acceptable and passable African adventure that will appeal to Robert Taylor fans.

I really wanted to like "Killers of Kilimanjaro." It has a lot going for it: beautiful African locations; adorable baby animals; photography in Cinemascope; exotic people; a suitably tense soundtrack—and Robert Taylor. There is some humor, some action and a woefully underplayed romance.

The main culprit is the script, which passed through the hands of a number of writers, ending up a monotone muddle. Taylor and Anthony Newly labor manfully but even their combined efforts can't salvage the poor writing.

Another problem is Anne Aubrey. I haven't seen her in anything else so her work here may not be typical. Aubrey is terminally bland. Her features are not interesting nor is she photographed well. Her emotions are so limited that when she learns her fiancé's sad fate she shrugs her shoulders and moves on. There are no sparks between her and Taylor.

Nor is Taylor at his best, although he is very effective in the spear throwing scene. He looks hot and tired and his left eye seems to droop. At 48 he is still slim and graceful although obviously too old for the blandly pretty 22 year old Aubrey. Someone like Eleanor Parker would have made the role come alive, but Aubrey can't.

Just for the visuals, "Killers of Kilimanjaro" is worth a look. Also, the depiction of Arab slave traders and a young boy whose Western inspired awakening to the evils of his family's trade couldn't be done in today's PC world. The conflict between English and German companies in Africa foreshadows the conflicts of the twentieth century.

With a better script and more vigorous direction by Richard Thorpe, "Killers of Kilimanjaro" could have been very entertaining. As it is, Robert Taylor judged it a failure and, reluctantly, I must agree.