Duel in the Jungle * (1954, Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, David Farrar, Patrick Barr) – Classic Movie Review 13,196

The 1954 British Technicolor jungle adventure film plus detective movie Duel in the Jungle stars Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain and David Farrar. 

Director George Marshall’s 1954 British Technicolor jungle adventure film plus detective movie Duel in the Jungle is a less than fully adequate time-passer. It stars Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, David Farrar and Patrick Barr.

When London diamond broker Perry Henderson (David Farrar) fakes his own death in a drowning ‘accident’ in Rhodesia, he is pursued up the jungle by his fiancée and personal secretary Marian Taylor (Jeanne Crain) and the investigating American insurance claims snoop Scott Walters (Dana Andrews), who is working for the suspicious American insurer as Henderson was insured for $2 million.

Stock characters in a stock crime melodrama don’t add up to anything at all particularly interesting or original, in a film that is neither especially well played nor very well made. To be fair, the second level cast tries hard enough with the limp material, and there is also an element here that these kinds of jungle adventures have dated badly. Erwin Hillier’s Technicolor cinematography on location is the film’s most distinguished feature, though Mischa Spoliansky’s score is notable too. Michael Mataka sings the song ‘The Night Belongs to Me’ (music by Mischa Spoliansky, lyrics by Norman Newel). He became the first person of African descent to become Zambian Police commissioner.

The production story is more interesting than the film.

It is shot between 24 August and early December 1953 at Elstree Studios near London and on location for five weeks in Southern Africa. Scenes were shot in South Africa at Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg, in Bechuanaland, at Victoria Falls and at Kruger National Park.

Financing was complicated. It was ‘presented’ by Associated British Picture Corporation but produced by Marcel Hellman Productions in conjunction with Moulin Productions (uncredited) and Todon Productions (uncredited). It was the first production from Todon, a company of American agent and producer Tony Owen and his actress wife Donna Reed, but most of the finance came from Moulin Productions, a British company headed by American Harold Mirisch. Tony Owen reported that the film was a financial success, making $3 million and launching his Todon company on a series of films set in Africa.

It was released in the UK by Associated British-Pathé and in the US by Warner Bros. After Los Angeles preview audiences jeered at the film’s ending, Warners re-edited the final scenes, cutting the British release of 105 minutes to 98 minutes.

The cast are Dana Andrews, Jeanne Crain, David Farrar, Patrick Barr, George Coulouris, Wilfrid Hyde White, Mary Merrall, Heather Thatcher, Paul Carpenter, Delphi Lawrence, John Salew, Walter Gotell, and Irene Handl.

George Marshall’s films include Destry Rides Again (1939), The Ghost Breakers (1940), The Blue Dahlia (1946), The Sheepman (1958), and How the West Was Won (1962).

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,196

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