Trader Horn (1973)

As I've noted many times before, sometimes it turns out to be a mistake to revisit some film or TV show that you have fond childhood memories of - more often than not, you find that from an adult perspective, they are actually pretty ropey.  But sometimes, you remember something as actually being pretty crappy and when you finally catch up with it again, decades later, as an adult, it turns out that your first impressions were actually right.  It's a surprisingly rewarding sensation to find that your childhood critical faculties weren't always lacking.  So it turned out to be with Trader Horn (1973), a film I have vague memories of having seen on TV as a kid and not being terribly impressed.  It was one of those films which subsequently seemed to have vanished, with no video or DVD releases, no further showings on UK terrestrial TV that I can recall and which has proven impossible to find on any streaming service.  Until now, that is, when it turned up on a Roku app which specialises in such material.  The version they have is a fairly poor quality off air recording from a US cable channel screening, but, right now, it's all that's available.  Trader Horn is a fascinating film for all the wrong reasons.  It was originally conceived by MGM as a big budget adventure film, a counter point to the more cynical and realist movies that were dominating the box office in the seventies.  Star Rod Taylor was very enthusiastic about the concept, hoping that with the end of the Vietnam war, a new cinematic era could be ushered in with such productions.  Ostensibly a remake of the 1931 film of the same title, itself based upon the eponymous book which purported to chronicle the supposedly true real life adventures of African explorer and guide 'Trader' Horn, the 1973 takes a detour into H. Rider Haggard and African Queen territory, with lost platinum mines and a World War One background.  It was clearly intended to evoke memories of classic African adventures like King Solomon's Mines and even Edgar rice Burroughs' Tarzan.

With a decent budget and production values, Trader Horn might well have been a success and have kick started the big budget action/adventure genre, something that would have to wait a few years more and the arrival of Star Wars.  But, at some point, MGM got cold feet - the budget was slashed and the scope of the film drastically scaled back.  Instead of location shooting in Africa, most of the footage ended up being shot on the MGM backlot and other nearby Californian locations.  All of the exotic African 'flavour' was provided by stock footage taken from earlier colour MGM African escapades, most notably King Solomon's Mines (1950) and Mogambo (1953).  Which meant that the costumes and hairstyles of the main characters had to be matched to those worn by the leads in those films in order for long shots from them to be incorporated with the new footage.  (There's a scene where female lead Ann Heywood gets her hair tangled in some bramble-like bushes which exists purely as an excuse for her character's hair to be cut shorter, to match long shots of Deborah Kerr in King Solomon's Mines).  The overall result is, unsurprisingly, somewhat underwhelming, with the pace, plot and action sequences of the new footage effectively being dictated by the availability of suitable stock footage.  Consequently, the pace is languid and the style flat and TV movie-like.  It doesn't help that many of the sets and locations are overly familiar from previous MGM films and TV series, (many would continue to be used for years to come - the main house set, for instance, later provided the interior of Mr Roarke's house in Fantasy Island).  MGM's downgrading of the project is even evident in the choice of director: Rexa Badiyi, a prolific TV director who, most importantly, had also created many notable TV opening title montage sequences, (most famously that for Hawaii Five-O), making him the ideal choice to piece together from variously sourced footage this montage of a film.  Not a commercial success, it is hardly surprising that MGM seemingly did its best to bury the film following its initial release.  I actually have a suspicion, bearing in mind my age when I first saw it on TV, that it might not even have had a UK cinematic release, instead going direct to TV.  The cast try valiantly to make something of the movie, but they can never lift it above the level of a TV movie.  The aspect to be appreciated, however, is the skill with which the stock footage is integrated with the new, which is far above average in terms of cut-and-paste filmmaking.

(Trader Horn shouldn't, of course, be confused with Trader Hornee (1970), a porn movie that came out three years earlier and was actually a parody of the original 1931 Trader Horn).