Killers of Kilimanjaro

Among the rash of Anglo-American oddities from circa 1960 (Suddenly Last Summer, A Terrible Beauty) this encomium for the British empire at its moment of maximum disintegration is in a class by itself. Victorian railway builder Taylor adventures off into the bush kitted out with lovable native urchin (Dimech), pretty white woman in distress (Aubrey), plus comic relief (Newley). A compendium of provocation (regarding Africans, wildlife, feminism, everything) the picture is both incident packed and deadly slow: a Thorpe speciality. Evelyn Waugh crossed paths with the production in Kenya, an encounter he described in A Tourist in Africa.