Sundown (1941) User Reviews

Great Mix of Wonderful Proportions

[cdelacroix1 · 7/10 · 18 February 2006]

I just saw this movie tonite on a "Classic Movies" presentation on TV, and was just delighted.

Set in 1940s Kenya, This is a good African adventure flick, with a tale that is tied in very well with the contemporary World War II backdrop to this 1941 production. In fact, there's a really wonderful scene, that I won't describe in detail (don't want to give anything away) in which an Italian from Abyssinia expresses passionately the global significance of what is transpiring in this isolated Kenyan outpost. From there we have a tale of intrigue, adventure playing itself out across exotic landscapes, dark caverns, and lovely lake-fronts. All in all, this movie has a strong Rider Haggard flavor. If you know and like Rider Haggard's stories, you'll probably like this movie.

Gene Tierney's top billing in this movie is a bit of an overstatement: Bruce Cabot is actually the star of the movie; with George Sanders in a strong supporting role. All are very good, though, with the Cabot-Sanders character conflict and collaboration carried off very well indeed. And Tierney is simply lovely, a delight to behold; and really a very fine actress indeed.

All in all, a good movie ... I'm grateful to have stumbled across it while channel surfing tonite ... !

A Camel After My Own Heart

[ferbs54 · 7/10 · 4 December 2007]

On the wall of my foyer hangs a framed issue of "Life" magazine dated November 10, 1941. Its front cover features a B&W photo of an impossibly beautiful, 21-year-old Gene Tierney from her new motion picture, "Sundown." Well, needless to say, I have wanted to see this film for years, but every time it pops up on one of the local PBS stations here in NYC late at night, it always seems to be in a lousy-looking 16mm print. Thank goodness I waited for this supremely crisp-looking DVD to be released! "Sundown" turns out to be a pretty well done WW2 action movie, dealing with an English outpost in Kenya, those nasty Nazis supplying guns to the natives, and a young caravan trader (Tierney) who helps the Brits out. And what a cast we have here: Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Harry Carey and Cedric Hardwicke are their usual fine selves, and (sneeze and you'll miss 'em) Woody Strode and Dorothy Dandridge add interesting support. But it is top-billed Tierney, here in her 5th film, who steals the show. Decked out in harem girl attire for most of the picture, she really is something to behold. In her 1979 autobiography "Self-Portrait," Tierney reveals that "Sundown"''s authentic-looking locales were actually filmed at Ship Rock Hill, New Mexico, and that she couldn't stand the hot weather and the reek of camels during the shoot. She also tells us that one of the camels tried to nip her on the derriere. Finally...a camel after my own heart!

"I learned a long time ago not to punish a native for a white man's crime".

[classicsoncall · 7/10 · 7 August 2010]

You almost lose track of the story whenever Gene Tierney's on screen in this picture, absolutely gorgeous with an air of exotic mystery to boot. It's curious to me how many reviewers for the film on this site take it for granted that the Nazis were behind the treachery and gun smuggling going on in the story. However, there's no mention of Nazis, no German characters, and if you didn't know any world history, you'd be hard pressed to place the action during World War II. That's a reasonably good guess however, given Pallini's (Joseph Calleia) competent dissertation on a global power's strategy to take over the world with Africa as a linchpin. The emphasis on Africa doesn't take on much significance in hindsight, but still makes for a good story.

It's interesting how the writers worked a native curse into the story with that 'one man of six' will die before it's over. Then white hunter Dewey (Harry Carey) arrives and things get moving. I had to control a chuckle when Marc Lawrence first showed up here as the Arab gun runner Hammud. He's played so many villains in his career that it wasn't unusual to cast him as a foreigner, but he looked a bit out of place here. Was that supposed to be an Afro?

So Gene Tierney's top billed here, but it seems to me Bruce Cabot did the heavy lifting as Commissioner Crawford, aka Bwana Mkubwa. George Sanders manages to earn respect as Major Coombes after arriving on scene with a hell-bent for leather military style before realizing he'd better switch tactics to get the most out of his people. Too bad Pallini couldn't hang around to the end of the story, he was an interesting character.

I didn't think I would like this one as it first started but it had a way of working it's mystery. The finale seemed to have a contrived heroic feel to it, but after all, the good guys had to come out on top, and the Cabot/Tierney romance didn't get in the way of the story. The closing scene with Sir Cedric Hardwicke extolling the virtues of freedom loving Brits was inspiring even if a bit forced. Still, I'd rather have the Allies win the day than those pesky, invisible Nazis.

Solid Drama With Interesting Settings & a Good Cast

[Snow Leopard · 30 January 2006]

Interesting settings and a good cast contribute significantly to this solid drama about intrigue in the desert during the Second World War. In features Gene Tierney in a role that, while perhaps slightly oddly cast, makes particularly good use of her elegant beauty, and also gives her a good variety of material to work with.

The story starts with George Sanders, as a by-the-book British official, sent to take over a desert outpost previously run in a rather lax manner by Bruce Cabot's character. The two have to work out their disagreements over native policy while tracking down an Axis plot to supply arms to unfriendly natives. Tierney comes in as a half-Arab, half-English owner of an extensive trading network, bequeathed to her by her father. Both sides are naturally eager to have her work with them.

It's a good setup, and in general it makes good use of it. There are some good action scenes, but there is also some substance in the character development and in the cross-cultural interactions. The pace is steady, though it might miss a couple of good opportunities to switch into high gear, since there is never a feeling of any particular urgency until quite close to the end.

Sanders and Tierney are both in very good form, which is almost enough in itself to make the movie worth seeing. The story is good, and there is hardly a moment when something of interest is not going on.

SUNDOWN (Henry Hathaway, 1941) **1/2

[Bunuel1976 · 6/10 · 3 July 2006]

This old-fashioned desert adventure set during WWII features a very good cast (Gene Tierney, Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Joseph Calleia, Harry Carey, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Reginald Gardiner, Marc Lawrence, Gilbert Emery) and solid production values but is not particularly distinguished or even memorable. Even so, the film did manage to earn 3 Academy Award nominations for Alexander Golitzen's art direction, Charles Lang's cinematography and Miklos Rosza's music.

While Tierney is the film's nominal star, she actually doesn't have that much of a role playing a native girl who goes to work as an agent for the British against the Germans. Hardwicke, then, only appears at the very end, as a pastor delivering a stirring sermon in a dilapidated church which prefigures Henry Wilcoxon's similar role in William Wyler's MRS. MINIVER (1942). Harry Carey, too, is not given much to do but Marc Lawrence makes for a menacing treacherous native and Cabot and Sanders are their usual reliable selves in competing for the attentions of Ms. Tierney. Surprisingly, however - or perhaps not, having previously wooed Mae West in MY LITTLE CHICKADEE (1940) - it's our very own Joseph Calleia (playing an Italian P.O.W. who acts as cook to his captors and is given to hollering operatic arias every once in a while - Calleia had, in fact, been a professional opera singer before moving to Hollywood) who is Tierney's confidante. Being Maltese, I have to say that it was a joy for me to watch him in the company of such an alluring star, not to mention playing against one of my favorite character actors George Sanders. Intriguingly, the IMDb states that Dorothy Dandridge (as a teenage native about to be forced to marry a wealthy older man), Rory Calhoun, Woody Strode and even future Cult Italian director Riccardo Freda make an appearance in this one but, apart from Dandridge, I didn't catch them!

Despite Henry Hathaway's reputation as one of Hollywood's top action directors - having made, among others, the seminal THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935) - here he is let down by a second-rate script (courtesy of Barre' Lyndon and Charles G. Booth) which is ultimately just a rehash of GUNGA DIN (1939) and updated to the WWII era. A competent escapist adventure and time-waster, then, but regrettably enough given the talent at hand, nothing more...

Good, 1940's Style Entertainment

[Chaz-19 · 7/10 · 9 October 1999]

I found SUNDOWN to be an enjoyable film. It seems sort of a cross between a jungle flick and a World War II espionage thriller, a kind of a TARZAN VRS THE NAZI'S. The story involves the British trying to prevent the Germans from secretly supplying the native Africans with weapons for a rebellion. Plenty of action and political incorrectness, plus Gene Tierney's ever so sexy overbite. Simply a must for Bruce Cabot fans everywhere.

The Sun Has Set Permanently On This Film

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 14 August 2010]

Sundown is a wartime morale boosting film that has not worn well over the years. The only thing eternal about it is Gene Tierney whose beauty is ageless.

Gene's an exotic Arab woman who comes into an outpost now run by the British in what is now Somalia. The British have recently taken it over from the Italians in Africa and Bruce Cabot is running the civil administration. Coming to handle the military end is Major George Sanders of the British army.

There's some Germans running guns to a tribe who have really not taken to white man's rule and the administrators have to put a stop to this before it all gets out of hand. Besides the people mentioned could it be the Dutch trader Carl Esmond, the former Italian administrator Joseph Calleia, or the white hunter Harry Carey. If you can't figure it out you haven't seen too many of these films.

I can't understand for the life of me why Bruce Cabot was in this film. He doesn't attempt any kind of British accent because that would make him look more ridiculous. How many members of the British colony were asked to do this script and must have turned it down. He has one scene where he talks about when this war is over Africans will truly be free. That wouldn't have gone over well with the management at 10 Downing Street whose prime minister said he was not going to see the British Empire dissolved on his watch.

To make sure you got the point after the main action of the film is over with cast members in the congregation, Cedric Hardwicke plays a vicar who is also George Sanders father. In a burned out bombed out church just like in Mrs. Miniver he gives an inspiring war speech in true Hardwicke eloquence.

This United Artists release produced by Walter Wanger got three Oscar nominations. I will say Wanger did not satisfy himself some studio back lot African sets. The films was shot on location in New Mexico to simulate the Somali desert and got a deserved black and white cinematography Oscar nomination for it. Sundown's other nominations for best music score and best art and interior sets.

All this talk about the good work of British colonialism is too much for today's audience. Just look at Somaliland now and see what it has become. But Sundown certainly gave young Gene Tierney an opportunity to look beautiful and exotic on the screen. I doubt this film will get a remake.

Nazis Arm Shenzi Warriors!

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 14 August 2014]

Doubtless, the weirdest score even written by Miklos Rozsa, a pounding of drums and a howling chant by the Africans of Hollywood. Maddening. Enough to send Walter Neff into an epileptiform seizure.

A bit slow out of the starting gate. Bruce Cabot and Reginald Gardiner are two British officers in charge of an army outpost in northern Africa in the early years of World War II. Their soldiers are committed native troops, unlike the neighboring Shenzi tribe who are warlike and xenophobic. Cabot's and Gardiner's sole enemy POW is Joseph Calleia, an Italian Captain who has given himself up to the British and now takes pride in his cooking. There's not much to do. "Miles and miles of nothing to do," remarks Gardiner.

(PS: Kids, Italy joined Germany in fighting the Allies in Europe. This is World War II, the one that came after World War I.)

But then George Sanders arrives and takes command of the post, a humorless by-the-book officer who brings news that the Shenzi are being provided with modern weapons by the Germans. The pace picks up when the Brits are joined by the young Gene Tierney, owner of hundreds of boutique shops around the world, half Arabic, leading her camel caravan through the desert.

Yes, the pace picks up. How could it not, when she sprawls so languorously in her "Arabic" get-up across a bed so large that Moby Dick could sleep in it, in the bedroom of her Hollywood mansion with its filmy drapes, beaded curtains and its candles? She's supine on that bed because she was nicked by a bullet fired by a Thompson sub-machine gun into Bruce Cabot's sparser military quarters. It may be the first time that tracer bullets are depicted on screen, and put to effective use. Director Hathaway was no artistic genius but he knew how to put a movie together.

It ends in a proper shoot out and a sentimental death.

It's not a major picture and it does drag at times but it isn't badly done.

Could Gene Tierney be any more beautiful?

[mdmphd · 4/10 · 18 December 2001]

This early B entry into the patriotic category slapped a gorgeous young Gene Tierney on the ads and posters, but you have to wait a good time before you glimpse her, riding in a Hollywoodized camel train. Previously, we've set up George Sanders and Bruce Cabot in the desert as guys who barely get along, but must rally in the face of attack. I've seen Sanders as so many enjoyable cads that it was fun to witness a rare good guy turn. However, Bruce Cabot's allure is pretty much a mystery to me - he's base and unsubtle in comparison, but I've always felt he'd just emerged, smiling, from under a car, covered in grease and a sixth grade education. Some people like 'em that way, as did Gene's gypsy queen character. This is an action adventure filler, tho, and just as we've been warned of invading locals with guns, ready to sabotage and attack the Brits in their land, there is a final gun battle in which we must lose a main character for the good of all. This feature requires nothing more than your barest attention on a Saturday afternoon, a programmer that made whatever else it was paired with better. It was almost more interesting identifying the great supporting cast and a surprise appearance by Dorothy Dandridge in one of her first roles. A two or two and a half stars out of five.-MDM

Floating Clouds

[richardchatten · 7/10 · 21 June 2020]

Veteran Hollywood cameraman Charles B. Lang peaked early in the Oscar stakes by winning his only statuette for the 1932 version of 'A Farewell to Arms'.

Twenty years before his magnificent desert photography on 'One-Eyed Jacks' lost to 'West Side Story', Lang's incredible cloudscapes (when at least he was up against 'Citizen Kane'!) for 'Sundown' (set in Kenya when it was in British East Africa but shot in Arizona and New Mexico) lost out to 'How Green Was My Valley' (set in Wales but shot in California).

So much for the Academy Awards...

Sundown was a partially interesting movie to me

[tavm · 5/10 · 28 January 2012]

I just watched this movie on YouTube for one reason and one reason only: To see an early Dorothy Dandridge performance. She appears in the beginning about to be married to a man named Kipsang. She has no lines but director Henry Hathway gives her a couple of close-ups so we can see how beautiful she truly was. But because of her color, she would not become a star until she eventually took the lead role in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones some 13 years after this film. As for the film itself, it's got some good action but it's mostly many officers like those played by Bruce Cabot and George Sanders talking lots of expository lines and I really couldn't understand them so part of me was almost bored at the whole thing. Good thing an Italian prisoner-of-war named Pallini (Joseph Calleia) provides some character flavor and Gene Tierney as a friend of his some more alluring close-ups. So on that note, Sundown is at least worth a look.

Gene Tierney as a budding flower at grips with nasty smuggling business in darkest Africa

[clanciai · 9/10 · 16 August 2018]

A surprisingly efficient and startling adventure feature from Africa by Henry Hathaway for being so young and early - this is already Hathaway completely fledged, and it's a very colourful drama although in black and white. Gene Tierney, also very young and fresh, provides the romanticism with glowing colours, and George Sanders for once plays a very unusually honest and heroic role. It's a great adventure, and the cave scenes are gorgeously suggestive in both drama, invention and cinematography. The photo is stupendous, and although rather thin, brief and superficial, it must be deemed as a great film - on a small scale, but nevertheless.

Desert melodrama with good cast but a weak script...

[Doylenf · 6/10 · 16 February 2012]

The main reason for watching SUNDOWN is to see exotic Gene Tierney looking ravishingly beautiful in some eye-catching costumes as an Arab girl who helps the British against the Germans during WWII in East Africa.

It has the feel of a serial cliffhanger without the chapter separations because something violent is happening every twelve minutes in typical cliffhanger fashion before the talky scenes resume a slower pace. Henry Hathaway directs the action scenes with his usual style but even he can't overcome a rambling script that fails to develop any of the characters.

In Tierney's case, it doesn't matter. She has seldom looked more beautiful in B&W than she does in this film and makes the film worth viewing for her presence alone. Good cast includes Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Carl Esmond, Joseph Calleia, Harry Carey, Reginald Gardiner and Cedric Hardwicke.

Nominated for three Academy Awards in techncal categories, including one for Miklos Rozsa's background score.

Not bad but with this cast, you'd expect more...

[planktonrules · 4/10 · 18 December 2009]

This film had no huge stars in it, but did have a very good cast filled with excellent supporting actors AND Gene Tierney before she became a big star. With George Sanders, Reginald Gardner, Harry Carey, Bruce Cabot, Jospeh Calleia and Cederic Hardwicke, you'd expect more from the film than it actually delivered. Most of this, I suspect, is because of a second-rate script, as director Henry Hathaway was a competent and well-established man at the helm.

The film is set in East Africa during WWII--just before the Americans entered the war. The Brits are trying to control their African colonies while subversive Nazi elements are trying to stir up trouble among the locals. One of the white men in the film is a double-dealer--working for the destruction of the British Empire! But, lovely Tierney, playing a sultan's daughter(!), is out to help save the day for good ol' Britain.

American film makers have long sided with the Empire and the 1930s and 40s saw a plethora of pro-empire films. Nowadays, with changed sensibilities, the notion of seeing the happy black natives dying for Queen and country seems ridiculous--and it would be hard to root for either side! Still, in its day, this propaganda piece was effective in drumming up support for the British--though when seen today, the film suffers from a long-winded script and silly casting. The one bright moment in the film is the final showdown between George Sanders and the enemy agent. Too bad after such a potent scene the film just seemed to talk and talk--losing some of its punch.

No Jungle for Jungle Woman

[futures-1 · 8 May 2006]

"Sundown" (1941): Starring Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, and… here's why I like this movie in the "guilty pleasure" category: it also stars Gene Tierney, the most beautiful woman of the 1940's. (THEN come Dorothy Lamour, Rita Hayworth, Veronica Lake, and others…) The video box reads: "A jungle woman…" (Tierney): well, there is NO JUNGLE or JUNGLE WOMAN in this movie, "…helps the British in defeating the attempts of the Nazis…" (there are NO Nazis in this movie), "…to take over and occupy the jungle!" (There is NO JUNGLE!). So, OTHER THAN THAT load of crap, there IS a DESERT, there is WWII for the British (not the U.S. yet), and there IS Pinup-olicious Gene Tierney. Another odd piece of junk is that "the main bad guy" is Dutch. IF you know anything about that war, the Dutch were Allies, folks, ALLIES. You know, hiding Ann Frank, etc.? Some of the photography is good, acting is average at best (and awful at times – watch the actor's eyes (who plays the "bad guy") as he reads his lines left to right, left to right, left to right. Whatta shmo. If you've ever wondered what Gene Tierney's belly button looked like, THIS is your chance. She also has a nice, statuesque walk. Guilty pleasures arise and be proud!

old style story

[drystyx · 7/10 · 1 August 2011]

SUNDOWN is what you might call a minor epic. It is about the old British grandeur. Instead of Heston, we get Bruce Cabot, who still looks King Kong tall, before he was dwarfed by the duke in later films.

Gene Tierney's beaut was probably the big marketing device here, and Hathaway directs to make full use of it.

The story is one that some people today mistakenly think was normally acceptable as how people viewed life. Knowing people from the era, as they spoke in the sixties and seventies, it is obvious that they thought it was just as silly in 1941 as it is thought of today, the grand British presence in Africa, the "sahib", the almighty "bwana".

Set during World War II, we get a look at the different countries and how their people naturally allied themselves. The Italian is a proud man, willing to live with the British, for instance.

What you will probably note most about this film is that it doesn't adhere to modern acceptable story telling standards. It is expository with sudden jumps from one idea to another, particularly at the end, which seems to come out of nowhere. That doesn't mean it is bad story telling. It just isn't what we're taught today.

Full of fairly common clichés, it doesn't dwell too much on any one of them, and proceeds to tell a story with believable characters.

Wartime in East Africa

[blanche-2 · 5/10 · 18 August 2010]

George Sanders, Bruce Cabot, Harry Carey, Reginald Gardner and Gene Tierney star in "Sundown," a 1941 film.

"Sundown" takes place in East Africa during World War II, but before the U.S. entered the conflict. The British, seeking to control the African colonies, find out that the Czechs are smuggling in guns to one of the tribes. An Arab merchant's daughter (Tierney) pretends to side with the German element in order to get at the truth.

I have no idea why this film is on DVD except to show the ravishingly beautiful Gene Tierney. And ravishingly beautiful she was - her looks are the best thing about this film. The film itself is boring, and the script not very good. None of the characters are really fleshed out well enough so that we care about them, with the possible exception of the Italian prisoner of war, Pallini, played by Joseph Calleia. Director Henry Hathaway manages to build some excitement into the final battle scenes.

Historically, the movie is interesting, with the U.S. filmmakers taking the side of the British here. Their control in Africa wouldn't always be so appreciated.

A relic from another era of cinema

[ihshils-649-173072 · 5/10 · 19 July 2014]

One judges films like this with criteria different from those applied to contemporary works, otherwise, it would receive a failing grade. However, as cinematic nostalgia it works well. The struggle against the Nazis and Fascists spread to Africa where the colonized population was enlisted to fight for the Allies in order to prevent a calamitous spread of an "evil empire". The images of "natives" is consistent with the stereotypes current at the time, but the plot---preventing the arming of tribes whose assistance was also desired by the Axis powers---is plausible. The techniques use to tell the story and the sets and scenes of skirmishes are a bit amateurish. The exteriors were obviously filmed in the Southwest and a large rock formation described a "Rhinoceros" mountain or peak looks like the Shiprock formation. For someone like me who spent Saturday afternoons at matinées, it's a trip back to another era of cinema; therefore a bit of fun. But,it's not a very good film.

There's an eclipse which prevents this sun from shining.

[mark.waltz · 4/10 · 7 July 2017]

A fantastic cast gets caught up with a pretentious drama/adventure that is more sleep inducing than a day long power outage. For a film with excellent Oscar nominated music, photography and sets, what is wrong with it? Well, considering that it's the story that really grabs the viewer and refuses to let go, I'd have to say the plot that in spite of being filled with nonstop action is simple just pretentious, unbelievable and deathly boring.

A great cast does what they can with this story of conflict between the British military and native tribes, another case of "uh oh, there goes the neighborhood!" of those do-gooder Englishmen trying to control every piece of soil they land on. Bruce Caboy and George Sanders lead the white men in conflict with the natives, told in a curse that among the six men there, one will die. The issue is that there's only five of them (including the Italian cook p.o.w. Joseph Calleia), that is until the great white hunter, Harry Carey, shows up. Reginald Gardiner and Carl Edmond are the other two.

Then there's the exotic looking Gene Tierney, playing a half Arab/half French princess like outcast, speaking perfect English and involved in the knowledge that one of the European men is a traitor. While this gets going a bit with the occasional attack on the fort and provides a few shocks here and there, it's overflowing with absurd situations, such as Tierney's being caught in a non-stop machine gun fire, and ending up with barely a scratch.

This looks great in its advertising, but quickly looses its grip thanks to frequent pacing issues and ridiculous melodramatic events. Plus, it's hard to root for the British considering that they are obviously the intruders. Well intended art becomes something you'd walk by in the Museum of Modern Art and be instantly perplexed by what it's all about. A sudden religious twist at the end triples the absurdity with an out of the blue cameo by Sir Cedric Hardwicke.

Joseph Calleia had perhaps the best part

[edalweber · 8/10 · 8 November 2010]

This is a pretty good adventure tale of WWII before the US got involved.Perhaps the most interesting character is Pallini, the humane, civilized Italian gentleman who is not sorry to be a prisoner of the British rather than fighting on the side of the Axis.Maybe the most striking scene is the one in which they find the rifles that are being smuggled in to arm the natives against the British, and acid is used to raise the markings that have been ground off.When the markings indicate the Skoda Works in Czeckoslovakia(which had been occupied by Hitler several years before, so it was not the Czecks who were smuggling the guns) Pallini says with a shudder. "Its THEM!Its always THEM!".Without ever mentioning Nazis.Supposedly this was because we weren't in the war yet, but in fact it is extremely effective,like a monster whose presence is sensed, but not seen.It is as though Pallini is referring to some evil that is so terrible that he can't even bring himself to mention its name,the horror that is even more horrible because it has no name.

The British simply eat this sort of thing up with a spoon

[robertguttman · 5/10 · 20 August 2018]

This is the sort of movie the British simply love. Or, at least, that seems to be what Hollywood would have us believe.

Sundown is about a District Commissioner in British East Africa who has to deal with German 5th Columnists running guns and stirring up rebellion amongst the natives. The District Commissioner is played by Bruce Cabot, who does not speak or behave in a manner even remotely British, so he is conveniently palmed off as a Canadian, even though he does not sound like a Canadian, either. He is abetted in his efforts by an indolent British assistant, played by Reginald Gardiner, a stuffy British officer, played by George Sanders, and a "White Hunter" played by Harry Carey reprising his famous role in "Trader Horn", who inexplicably strolls in out of the night for no apparent reason. Also about the place is the obligatory obsequious Italian POW, played by Joseph Calleia. A mysterious Dutch refugee also shows up, played by Carl Esmond, whom the audience instinctively distrusts from the moment he is introduced, but whom the characters in the movie, being British and instinctively trusting of everyone, stupidly accept at face value.

Adding spice to the intrigue is the presence of 21-year-old Jean Tierney, playing some sort of mysterious female Arab trader who supposedly operates a string trading posts all over East Africa, which she personally supplies by leading her own caravans of camels. The camels she uses are clearly of the two-humped Bactrian variety, which live only in Asia, but that is of little consequence. After all, one has to be willing to suspend a certain amount of belief in any movie in which the primary concern of Nazi territorial ambition seems to be taking over Africa by stirring up the natives against the British.

Will the stalwart British manage to stop the Hun from carrying out their dastardly plan to arm the child-like natives with Vickers heavy machine guns and stir them up into a warlike frenzy? Is Jean Tierney (with whom, since she is a "native", the British will not sit at the same dining table) in cahoots with the nefarious Boche? Or, is she really a Good Egg after all? You'll simply have to see the movie to find out the answers.

Drums Of Africa

[telegonus · 9/10 · 25 August 2002]

The story is nonsense, and Gene Tierney couldn't act, yet this Henry Hathaway-directed a adventure picture set in North Africa is solid entertainment thanks to Hathaway's no-nonsense handling of the material, Miklos Rozsa's stirring score, and its splendidly chosen largely no-star or near-star cast: Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Harry Carey, Cedric Hardwicke, Marc Lawrence. Cabot is especially good in the lead, and his work here makes one wonder why he didn't become a bigger name. Walter Wanger produced this one, which was a big hit, and also somewhat of a hybrid, a mix of Korda-and-Sabu style exotica with Nazi intrigue out of Fritz Lang and Hitchcock, with Tierney in the Lamarr-Lamour exotic princess role. Ersatz, and never for a minute convincing, but hard to resist.

Action thrills from director Henry Hathaway!

[JohnHowardReid · 9/10 · 19 December 2017]

I once saw a cinema program that combined "Of Mice and Men" with "Sundown". No greater contrast could possibly be imagined, yet both movies stand at the forefront of their particular genres. "Of Mice and Men" is Literature, "Sundown" a serial thriller from The Saturday Evening Post.

Fresh from her triumph as Belle Starr (1941), lovely Gene Tierney is at her exotic best in Henry Hathaway's action-a-plenty Sundown (available on a 10/10 VCI DVD).

Bruce Cabot, George Sanders, Harry Carey are the heroes battling a native uprising instigated by Nazis in Africa. Hathaway and his brilliant photographer, Charles Lang, handle this tosh with such pace and bravura as to engage the rapt attention of even the most jaundiced viewer.

A superb Miklos Rozsa score adds to the excitement of Lang's noirishly atmospheric photography of the movie's really striking sets and locations. Who will ever forget the terrifying sight and sound of tracer bullets flashing through the night? Not me, that's for sure!

This move deserves a better rating

[danfey · 8/10 · 16 November 2020]

It is set in a time gone by. We cannot judge its defense of colonialism though it was as part of an anti-Nazi propaganda film made during WW II.