Coast of Skeletons ** (1965, Richard Todd, Marianne Koch, Dale Robertson) – Classic Movie Review 5822

Re-creating his role from the first film, Richard Todd again gives a dependably solid turn as dogged district commissioner Inspector Harry Sanders in director Robert Lynn’s once more rather uninspired and dully written 1965 British-South African adventure film sequel to 1963’s Death Drums along the River.

This time, in another standard detective yarn, Todd’s Inspector Harry Sanders investigates American magnate A J Magnus (Dale Robertson)’s troubled diamond business in Africa, where he is stealing gems that do not belong to him but would like them to.

The nice widescreen Technicolor and Techniscope cinematography, and the Namibia and South Africa filming locations, help another glum if acceptable old-style potboiler, again with little flair in the acting or style in the direction, though it is quite slickly done.

However, Dale Robertson is okay as the villain, and it is good to have Marianne Koch back (though in a different role, as Helga) and Derek Nimmo aboard as Tom Hamilton (replacing Jeremy Lloyd in the first film), but the German actors Heinz Drache, Elga Andersen and Dietmar Schönherr are all struggling.

Though ‘inspired by’ Edgar Wallace’s 1911 novel Sanders of the River, producer Harry Alan Towers’s story [writing as Peter Welbeck] and Anthony Scott Veitch’s screenplay have got very little to do with it, using just the characters from the book.

It is shot by Stephen Dade and scored by Christopher Whelen.

Also in the cast are Gabriel Bayman, George Leech, Gordon Mulholland, Josh DuToit, Buster Perry, T R J Edwards and Derek Lyndon.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5822

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