6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 3.9 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 3.9 |
A chartered plane crashes in a remote African desert after colliding with a swarm of locusts. It’s not the harsh surroundings or the vicious baboons that the survivors have to worry about, but a fellow crazed passenger.
Starring: Stuart Whitman, Stanley Baker, Susannah York, Harry Andrews, Theodore BikelAdventure | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.35:1
English: LPCM Mono
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region free
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 3.5 | |
Extras | 0.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Making last minute travel plans seems to rarely work out in the film and television world. Look what happened to all those victims of chance (fate?) who boarded Oceanic 815 for one last-minute reason after another in Lost for a good example. There’s nothing quite so cosmic going on in the 1965 potboiler Sands of the Kalahari, simply a jetliner problem that prevents a gaggle of passengers from getting to their appointed destination on time, leading them to charter a little puddle-jumper (if indeed there were puddles in the Kalahari) which has the unfortunate fate (chance?) to run into a swarm of locusts which brings the plane down and thrusts a ragtag group of survivors into the sandy wild to fend for themselves. That’s basically it, plot-wise, for Sands of the Kalahari, an interesting early entry in the disaster sweepstakes which actually gives us the disaster fairly early in the film and then lets the chips fall where they may for various characters, kind of like the formula Irwin Allen would follow years later in a series of films including The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and that wonder of Sensurround, Earthquake. Sands of the Kalahari actually may remind viewers of another film more than any Allen film, however, and a film released more or less simultaneously with Kalahari itself, namely the James Stewart starrer The Flight of the Phoenix. Unlike the Allen behemoths, both Kalahari and Phoenix are relatively small scale productions (albeit on a vast canvas) focusing on a handful of survivors and concentrating more on character than on special effects. Kalahari also evokes elements of Lord of the Flies as well as a much older film. Without spoiling anything in particular, let’s just say that a certain similarity to 1932’s iconic The Most Dangerous Game rears its ugly head throughout the film.
Sands of the Kalahari is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. The good news is Olive doesn't radically scrub these releases to within an inch of their lives, but the bad news is, no apparent restoration of any kind is embarked upon either. Kalahari was mastered from what Olive's press release states was an archival print, and that print is in mostly very good shape. Occasional slight blemishes and white specks pop up, but they're extremely transitory. This boasts a nominally sharper image than Olive's Crack in the World, but Kalahari still suffers from slight softness in its wider shots. Colors look suitably robust and accurate and fine detail in close-ups is very good to excellent. Contrast and black levels are both solid throughout the feature. There's some minimal but still noticeable edge enhancement and haloing in several shots, especially when we're offered sights of the dunes meeting the horizon with backlit sun.
Sands of the Kalahari is presented with a lossless LPCM mono track that sounds fairly spry for its age, especially with regard to the rousing score by jazz legend John Dankworth (late husband of the fantastic singer Cleo Laine). While this film probably would have benefited from a repurposed 5.1 track, what's here sounds fine, with very good fidelity and a decent if not overwhelming reproduction throughout all frequency ranges. The soundtrack does suffer from a certain narrow, boxy sound which is no doubt endemic to the original stems. But dialogue is clean and clearly heard, and the mix between the dialogue, score and ambient environmental sound effects is well handled.
No supplements are offered on this Blu-ray.
Sands of the Kalahari is inarguably old fashioned, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. While the film starts out like a standard cookie cutter survival epic, it manages to delve into some kind of shockingly dark and twisted subject matter that is certainly unusual for a film of its era. Benefiting immensely from a really stunning use of location photography, and featuring some fine, unusually nuanced performances from its smallish cast, Sands of the Kalahari may in fact be generic at its core, but that core is decorated with so many unusual elements that the stereotypes tend to fade away like bleached bones in the desert sun. Dramatic, exciting and with one of the most viscerally unforgettable endings in mid-1960's film, Sands of the Kalahari is a fascinating film that deserves a new audience which hopefully this Blu-ray can help to provide. Highly recommended.
1965
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