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“We’ve gone up a lot heavier than this.” With that one sentence, the fate of seven people - all desperately trying to catch a flight to Johannesburg - are sealed together forever in Sands of Kalahari. It’s a survival film from 1965 – a few years before the survival film became fashionable with films like The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno – yet, never once does the film slip into the territory of humorous camp and it easily could have.
When a charter plane collides with a swarm of locusts and crashes in a remote part of the African desert, its survivors - Dr. Bondrachai (Theodore Bikel), the desirable divorcee Grace Munkton (Susannah York), big game hunter Brian O'Brien (Stuart Whitman), the elderly Grimmelman (Harry Andrews), mining engineer Mike Bain (Stanley Baker), and pilot Sturdevan (Nigel Davenport) – must survive against starvation, baboons, scorpions, and one crazed American in order to return to civilization. The straight-forward action and classic vibe of this adventure makes for one hell of an adventure against a stunning and searing location that crackles and blisters with danger.
Expertly handled by second-tier director Cy Endfield (Mysterious Island, Zulu), Sands of Kalahari ties a string of events, starting with a plane crash, together to make for a tense exploration of just how far humans will go for survival. It’s a triumphant film that, seen largely through a stereotypical 1950’s woman’s point of view, is full of energy, paranoia, and sweat. She falls in and out of love at the drop of a hat in her search for survival, yet it all works in a war of nerves.
Some might suggest, in a joking manner of course, that Sands of Kalahari is the greatest baboon movie ever made. True enough, and yet there is a lot more kicking about under its survivalist surface and brain-rattling ending. The violent control of power certainly echoes 1963’s adaptation of Lord of the Flies, but expert location shots and sheer paranoia over possibility is all Sands. Rich with inner turmoil and individual conflict, the film is easily a case study of man verses primal instincts and it never once shies away from the truth it has to present about the inner workings of man, woman, and, yes, baboon.
The fatalistic de-evolution of Whitman’s heroic stature is indeed revolutionary for the time. Unassuming and great for audiences, the character originally thought to be a hero is the one with the plan to do them all in. Is it insanity? Or simple survival against the swarming sands and threats of the Kalahari? Based on a novel by William Mulvihill, Endfield’s script retains the potboiler tension and its intelligence throughout its two-hour running time. Never once does it disappoint the edginess it presents to its audience; a forgotten classic? I certainly think so.
While some modern day audiences might find the film dated, a true cinephile will understandably enjoy and celebrate what Endfield and his cast did when they found themselves trapped in the baboon-infested Sands of Kalahari.
MPAA Rating: This title has not been rated by the MPAA.
