This might be of interest to bad film buffs. The title is a knowing misnomer because even though the opening voiceover informs us that we are in “Africa! A country (sic!) that for centuries was hidden from civilised man”, the story begins in the wrong part of the continent to claim any Voodoo precedents. However the narrator insists; “Africa! Where primitive people still practice evil religions which weave a dark web of death around all who sin against their gods.” So Mike Stacey, a ‘great white hunter’ (Bryant Haliday) who kills a lion held sacred to the ‘Simbazi’ tribe is seemingly condemned to persecution by a supernatural curse. Hence the original (less blantantly misleading but also less commercial) title Curse Of Simba.
Penned by Brian Clemens under the nom-de-plume ‘Tony O’ Grady’, it’s a dull plod as Haliday goes through the motions of some rather lacklustre ‘is it the supernatural or is it his all in his mind?’ occurrences; being stalked through a park by a disembodied lion’s roar, chased over the downs by two war-painted Simbazi tribesmen (a ridiculously extended sequence that ends up looking like something out of The Benny Hill Show), shadowed by an angry looking black man in raincoat and trilby hat, and having vivid dreams showing a witch doctor tormenting Stacey’s captured gun bearer back in Africa.
Are these hallucinations, caused by a septic wound and/or alcoholism, or is the curse real? Stacey’s estranged wife turns in desperation to an ‘African Expert’ (played by the prolific Louis Mahoney, who returned to Voodoo the following year in Hammer’s classic Plague Of The Zombies and again in 1973 in the Bond movie Live And Let Die and again in TV’s Urban Gothic episode Deptford Voodoo). He informs her ‘The only way is to return to the scene….find the man who placed the curse and kill him.’ As she leaves, he apologises, ‘sorry I couldn’t be of more help.’ (!)
Shonteff does what he can in the way of framing his shots, utilising light and shadow and smooth camera movements, but he’s no Jacques Tourneur and is moreover forced to pad out the flimsy plot with boring filler – the doctor repacking his bag (first his needles, then his syringe, then his cotton wool, then his bottle of iodine, then his enamel dish, then…) The ‘sensual’ dance routine in a shabby nightclub performed by Beryl Cunnigham to the strains of the Bobby Breen Quintet takes care of three minutes fify five seconds, and a scene of Stacey following Man In Trilby along a suburban high street drags on and on….then there are Stacey’s dreams featuring recycled footage to further stretch the running time.
Bryant plays an unsympathetic character in bland fashion and none of the other players are much cop, including Dennis Price, way beyond his ‘Best Before’ date. Neither does it help that Regent’s Park fails spectacularly to look in the least like an African savannah.
One final word. Those reviewers who routinely describe this film as ‘Lewtonesque’ clearly need to take another look at those RKO classics.