THE MOUSE AND HIS CHILD

 

The UK video version of The Mouse and His Child (© Charles Swenson/Fred Wolf/Murakami-Wolf Productions/Sanrio/DeFaria-Lockhart-Sanrio – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

A few weeks ago, I finally watched the animated movie version of one of my favourite childhood novels, Russell Hoban's delightful 1967 fantasy, The Mouse and His Child.

Directed by Charles Swenson and Fred Wolf, and released in 1977 by the Japanese company Sanrio, The Mouse and His Child stays fairly faithful throughout to its literary original, perhaps a little too faithful, in fact, as I'll explain shortly.

As in the novel, the movie focuses upon a clockwork toy consisting of a father mouse and his child with hands connected who dance together when wound up. At the movie's beginning, they are housed safely inside a cozy toyshop, waiting to be purchased alongside many other toys there, as Christmas grows very near, but inadvertently they find themselves abandoned upon the snowy street outside.

They are initially rescued by a kindly tramp (voiced by John Carradine) before being seized by an evil rat named Manny (Peter Ustinov), who enslaves clockwork toys to do his every bidding, and callously breaks up any that fail to meet his requirements. Thanks to a prophecy-spouting frog (Andy Devine), however, the mouse and his child succeed in escaping the rat's clutches, but he pursues them unrelentingly as they engage upon a series of exciting adventures, meeting all manner of distinctive creatures in their quest to become self-winding toys. Other famous names in this movie's voice cast include Sally Kellerman as a seal and Cloris Leachman as Euterpe the parrot.

In the original novel, Hoban's characters are given to all manner of philosophizing, often at length, which is why, famously, this book is as popular among adults as it is among children. That same tendency is reiterated in this film version, but unfortunately with far less success.

For whereas a book by its very nature is primarily verbal in format, an animated movie (or any other kind, for that matter) is primarily visual, and in this particular movie the philosophizing comes across as being not so much verbal as verbose, slowing down the action on an all-too-frequent basis. Unlike the novel, moreover, this movie version of it is aimed fair and square at children, so the philosophizing is likely not only to go completely over the heads of much of its intended audience but also to bore them rigid.

To be frank, even I found it tedious and heavy-going at times, despite my having enjoyed it all those years ago when reading the novel. Sometimes the written word simply does not translate well on screen, and this movie, sadly, is definitely a prime example of that. It is nothing if not intriguing, therefore, that Hoban is said to have disliked how, in his opinion, the novel's philosophizing was watered down in the movie! More watering, less wording, is what I say!

The animation is of a very basic nature – Disneyesque, it ain't – but nonetheless is serviceable for a movie that has a quaint, whimsical charm in spite of its prolix proclivity, so if you get the chance to view this film, do so.

Indeed, at the time of writing this review, The Mouse and His Child can be watched in its entirety free of charge on YouTube, so click here if you'd like to do so.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

WISH DRAGON

 

Publicity poster for Wish Dragon (© Chris Appelhans/Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Tencent Pictures/Beijing Sparkle Roll Media Corporation/Base FX/Flagship Entertainment Group/Boss Collaboration/Cultural Investment Holdings/Industrial Light & Magic/Sony Pictures Releasing/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

On 21 April 2022, my movie watch was the 2021 Netflix-released, Columbia/Sony-produced, computer-animated movie Wish Dragon, written and directed by Chris Appelhans, and which I absolutely loved!!

Think Aladdin, but with a pink wise-cracking Oriental ancient teapot-inhabiting dragon who grants a poor Chinese boy named Din three wishes (but cannot make the girl he loves fall in love with him) instead of a blue wise-cracking Middle Eastern ancient lamp-inhabiting genie who grants a poor Arabian boy named Aladdin three wishes (but cannot make the girl he loves fall in love with him) and you have the central plot of this immensely funny film, set in modern-day Shanghai, but there are plenty of novel twists and turns along the way too.

Its palette of dazzling colours and its fast & furious pace mean that you can't take your eyes off the screen, literally! As I've mentioned before, my test of how much I enjoy a movie is how many times I look at my watch or clock – the more times I look, the less I'm liking it. At the end of this 98-min movie, I realised that I had never once looked at my watch or clock!

This was no doubt also due in no small way to the ceaseless flow of highly humorous but blink-and-you'll-miss-them sight gags, holding your attention in a vice-like grip throughout. My personal favourites were Long the Wish Dragon (voiced drily by John Cho) riding inside a car (a taxi, to be precise) for the first time in his 1000-year existence and sticking his head out of the window with tongue lolling manically exactly like dogs do (see photo-still at the end of this review); and Long drinking thirstily out of a toilet, again just like dogs do...until he discovers what toilets are actually used for! Incidentally, in the Mandarin Chinese dub of Wish Dragon, Long is voiced by none other than Jackie Chan, who is also one of this movie's producers (another one is Aron Walker, who famously produced the Shrek movies). And Long's full name is Long Zhu, which is Mandarin for Wish Dragon.

As in Aladdin, Wish Dragon also includes some poignant scenes amid the slapstick. Notable among these is when Long's young but noble master, poverty-stricken young student Din Song (voiced when a youth by Jimmy Wong, by Ian Chen when a child), reveals to him that there are more important, worthwhile things in life – such as family and friendship – than the wealth and power that Long's previous nine masters had all craved.

In particular, Din clings tenaciously to his happy memories of joyful times spent with his childhood best friend Li Na Wang (Natasha Liu Bordizzo). She originally lived with her father Mr Wang (Will Yun Lee) in the same humble run-down neighbourhood where Din still lives with his elderly mother Mrs Song (Constance Wu), but she was abruptly taken away by her father 10 years ago to a much more upmarket area where she has subsequently grown up to become a world-famous model with an exceedingly affluent lifestyle. Even though she now inhabits a very different social world, one that is ostensibly unattainable by him, Din has never stopped missing Li Na, and now that he has a bona fide wish dragon to magically provide him with whatever he chooses or needs, surely there must be some way for him to re-enter her life on an equal footing and restore their friendship?

Unfortunately, however, as Din swiftly discovers, there is also the inconvenient but not inconsiderable matter of staying one step ahead of a very persistent, pernicious band of violent villains intent upon stealing the teapot, and thence Long, for their mysterious employer, whose identity turns out to be a major surprise…

Wish Dragon is an excellent feel-good movie, with John Cho's Long a suavely sardonic yet truly hilarious tour de force throughout, ably augmented by Jimmy Wong's/Ian Chen's Din as an immensely likeable, honorable underdog, sometimes naïve but always noble, whom you root for from the very first moment he appears on screen.

Although it took me ages to track down this enchanting film's official English-dubbed DVD, it was well worth the wait, because Wish Dragon is one animated movie that I'll definitely be rewatching. And if you want to find out what it's like to deal with a dragon of the wish-fulfillment variety, be sure to click here to watch an official Wish Dragon trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Long enjoying his first car journey – photo-still from Wish Dragon (© Chris Appelhans/Columbia Pictures/Sony Pictures Animation/Tencent Pictures/Beijing Sparkle Roll Media Corporation/Base FX/Flagship Entertainment Group/Boss Collaboration/Cultural Investment Holdings/Industrial Light & Magic/Sony Pictures Releasing/Netflix – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

JUST ASK FOR DIAMOND (aka DIAMOND'S EDGE)

 

My official UK DVD of Just Ask For Diamond (© Stephen Bayly/20^th Century Fox – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

After watching a number of intense movies lately, on 8 June 2022 I decided to view something lighter and light-hearted – so I duly selected my DVD of the British film noir spoof movie Just Ask For Diamond (released in the USA as Diamond's Edge).

Directed by Stephen Bayly, with a screenplay and story by English mysteries/suspense novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz, and released in 1988 by 20^th Century Fox, Just Ask For Diamond was based upon Horowitz's 1986 novel The Falcon's Malteser. As you will have guessed from its title, this in turn was (very) loosely inspired by, and hilariously spoofed, the classic 1941 American film noir The Maltese Falcon, which was of course adapted from the classic 1930 crime novel of the same title by Dashiell Hammett. Moreover, The Falcon's Malteser is just the first in an ongoing series of film noir spoof novels and short stories by Horowitz featuring the Diamond Brothers. OK, now that we've got all of that out of the way, here's what this movie is all about!

Set in what was then contemporary (i.e. 1980s) London, Just Ask For Diamond features a hapless private eye in his late 1920s who calls himself Tim Diamond (played by Dursley McLinden), even though his real name is Herbert Tim Simple – with simple being the operative word here (as in simple by name, simple by nature!). For Diamond is totally clueless in every way, which is hardly a plus for someone who hopes to earn a living from detective work, and not surprisingly his business is forever teetering upon the brink of bankruptcy.

Indeed, all that gives Diamond hope (that's a pun for all you gemologists reading this!) is his 13-year-old brother Nick (Colin Dale). Unlike Tim, Nick is most definitely clued-up, a veritable young Sherlock Holmes, in fact, who solves with ease those few cases that do come their way, but allows Tim to take the credit, if only to ensure that they keep a roof over their head and a tin of beans in their kitchen – even though they no longer have a tin opener, because Tim pawned it!

Happily, however, just as snowy December arrives to add the risk of being frozen to death to their ever-growing list of woes, so too does a client, a vertically-challenged South American named Johnny Naples (José René Ruiz). He offers them the princely sum of £100 if they will keep hold of a small but mysterious parcel for him for just three days, after which he will return for it and give them another £100.

Not surprisingly, the Diamond Brothers readily accept this odd assignment, but as soon as Ruiz is gone they entirely fail to resist the temptation to open the package – only to discover to their bewilderment that it simply contains a box of Maltesers (a very popular, inexpensive British confectionary consisting of small milk chocolate balls with malted milk centres). Nor will they ever obtain an explanation for this anomaly from Naples, because before the three days are up, so are his days, all of them. See Naples and die, they say – or, in his case, be Naples and die!

And so it is that this ostensibly innocuous box and its equally inoffensive contents plunge the Diamond Brothers into a murky morass of intrigue, double dealings, and multiple murders, as they (or, rather, Nick!) pit their wits against several different agents from the criminal underworld, including the evil but nowadays sauna-slimmed Fat Man (Michael Robbins), all of whom will go to any lengths to seize that box of Maltesers – but why?

After Tim is wrongly arrested for Naples's murder by Chief Inspector Snape (Bill Paterson) and his brutal cohort Boyle (Jimmy Nail), they inform him that somehow the box holds the key to a secret cache of diamonds worth a considerable fortune that international master criminal Henry von Falkenberg aka The Falcon (Forbes Collins) had stashed away before his own unforeseen demise. When Tim is subsequently released by Snape, he and Nick receive a tip-off that Naples's girlfriend, a club singer wonderfully named Lauren Bacardi (Susannah York), may be able to offer them some clues. But she and they are soon apprehended by a pair of fiendish German operatives named Gott (Peter Eyre) and Himmell (Nickolas Grace), with their future looking anything but rosy, or even ongoing, for that matter! Diamonds are forever? Probably not, unless the ever-resourceful Nick can save the day for them yet again.

Add to this melodramatic mix the sinister form of The Falcon's so-called Black Widow, Brenda von Falkenberg, who keeps an alligator named Fido in her swimming pool (as you do), for extracting information from her victims before Fido extracts their internal organs from them (which Nick almost discovers first-hand at one point!), plus the mysterious case-within-a-case of the exploding barcode-reader belonging to the Diamond Brothers' local mini-supermarket owner Mr Patel (Saeed Jaffrey), and you have a scenario that soars so far over Tim's head as to be all but invisible to him.

Moreover, this cryptic case even taxes Nick's grey matter, until, just like Archimedes, the answer suddenly materializes while he's taking a bath. Happily, however, unlike Archimedes, he does not promptly dash naked into the street shouting that he has it! Instead, he rather more calmly phones all of the necessary dramatis personae, friends and foes alike, to meet him at a set time the following morning in the cemetery where the late Henry von Falkenberg's imposing, aptly falcon-decorated mausoleum stands, and all will be revealed, including the diamonds.

Needless to say, however, nothing is ever quite that straightforward in the labored lives of Nick and Tim. I won't give away the denouement, other than to say that in spite of Nick's skilful detective work, the Diamonds are not greeted by the diamonds after all – someone else had made the same canny deductions as Nick, but had got there first. Not all is lost, however, as Nick subsequently receives one of the diamonds in the post from that person, the sale of which will keep him and Tim afloat until the next case comes along. And who knows, they may even be able to retrieve their tin-opener from the pawn shop!

Just Ask For Diamond is a very funny comedy movie, made even more so by the deliberate dead-pan acting of the criminals, Tim's disaster-strewn bursts of enthusiasm and total ineptitude portrayed exuberantly by McLinden, contrasting so comprehensively with Nick's  razor-sharp gumshoe instincts and intellect as conveyed so effectively by Dale, plus a wonderful supporting cast of British actors who in addition to those already named here include Roy Kinnear, Michael Medwin, and Jim McManus, as well as even a special appearance by British heavy metal group Mammoth, playing the Fat Man's heavies.

I thoroughly enjoyed Just Ask For Diamond, whose frenetic pace never slackens for a moment, with its laconic asides and one-liners firing constantly from all sides like a perpetual hail of machine-gun bullets, and I only wish that there could have been more Diamond Brothers movies (but sadly, as I'll explain shortly, this was not to be).

(Incidentally: I am personally mystified that although Dursley McLinden's face appears on the front cover of some official DVD releases of Just Ask For Diamond (including the one that I own), his name is not included in the front cover's list of actors and actresses appearing in this movie, meaning that you have to turn to the back cover in order to discover who he is. Not how one might expect the actor playing a movie's title character to be treated, surely?)

Anyway, Just Ask For Diamond proved popular enough for the British TV channel ITV to launch a six-part British TV series in 1991 entitled The Diamond Brothers, in which McLinden and Dale reprised their eponymous roles. It was directed and written by Horowitz, who subsequently adapted it into a new Diamond Brothers novel, South By South-East, which, as its title suggests, has fun with the plot of the famous Hitchcock film noir movie North By Northwest. Sadly, however, the series was only ever screened once, but copies of it do exist (it has not been wiped, the awful fate of so many TV shows in the past), so perhaps one day it will be again.

This would be particularly welcomed by fans of Dursley McLinden, whose lead role in Just Ask For Diamond was his only significant appearance on the big screen. Born in 1965 on the Isle of Man, long before he became Tim Diamond Dursley had established himself as a very popular, major star of musical theatre in London's West End, appearing on stage in the likes of Gigi, Phantom of the Opera, and Follies. By the late 1980s, moreover, his fame had begun to furnish him with roles on TV too, which led to his appearing in such high-rating, well-loved shows as Mr Bean, After Henry, and, most famously, Doctor Who – as a principal supporting character, army soldier Sergeant Mike Smith, throughout one 1988 story, 'Remembrance of the Daleks'.

Just as Dursley seemed poised to break through into the big time both on television and in the movies, however, tragedy struck. His health rapidly deteriorated, so much so that he virtually gave up acting after 1991, and in 1995, aged only 30, Dursley died from AIDS. The death of so popular an actor at so young an age hit the British entertainment world hard, as he had made so many friends in it, and had inspired so many others globally with his tireless work for AIDS charities and awareness when he was no longer able to continue acting full-time. One of those friends was the TV screenwriter/producer Russell T. Davies, who based the lead character (a young actor named Ritchie Tozer, played by Olly Alexander) in the 2021 AIDS-themed Channel 4 TV drama series It's A Sin upon Dursley. And as a further tribute to him, Davies included in this same series a scene in which Ritchie is being filmed playing a character named Trooper Linden in a dalek-featuring Doctor Who story entitled 'Regression of the Daleks' (this story was fictitious, but the scene was intended to recall Dursley's appearance in 'Remembrance of the Daleks').

Just Ask For Diamond is another lasting tribute and testament to Dursley's great talent as an actor, offering us a potent yet all-too-brief insight into how his acting abilities and power would certainly have developed and expanded had he not been taken from our world far too soon. Consequently, I sincerely hope that whoever has the authority to rescreen The Diamond Brothers TV show will do so, and even release it on DVD, so that Dursley's last major on-screen contribution will be fully available for everyone to enjoy for all time, adding significantly to his body of accessible preserved work.

Finally: if you'd like to spy on the zany, harebrained crime capers in which only the Diamond Brothers could find themselves embroiled, be sure to click here to watch an official Just Ask For Diamond trailer on YouTube.

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity photograph for the Doctor Who story 'Remembrance of the Daleks', depicting Dursley McLinden as Sgt Mike Smith alongside a dalek (© BBC/BBC Studios – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

 

CHANDER PAHAR (aka MOUNTAIN OF THE MOON)

 

Publicity poster for Chander Pahar (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

One of the most famous Bengali adventure novels is Chander Pahar (retitled as Mountain of the Moon in subsequent English-language translations), which was written by Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, an Indian writer in the Bengali language, and was originally published in 1937. Just under a decade ago, it was turned into a blockbuster Bengali movie that I have long wanted to watch, due to its notable cryptozoological content, as will be revealed below, but trying to track down its English-subtitled 2-disc DVD proved all but impossible.

True, one example had been listed on ebay for quite a while, but its seller was based in the USA, and when the very considerable cost of shipping it to the UK quoted by the seller, plus import charges, were added to the far from inconsiderable Buy It Now purchase price of the DVD itself, the total cost far exceeded what I was willing to pay for it. And so my wait continued, until very recently, when local friend and Amazon Prime subscriber Jane Cooper very kindly enabled me to watch it at long last by purchasing it for a significantly lower cost on AP. So here now is my review of this spectacular monster/adventure movie. (Incidentally, I'd still very much like to purchase it in the form of its 2-disc English-subtitled DVD, to add to my movie collection and thereby always have it directly available to rewatch, so if you see one anywhere for sale at a reasonable price, please do let me know – thanks very much!)

Directed by Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, released in 2013 by Shree Venkatesh Films, and set in the years 1909-1910, Chander Pahar follows the exciting (albeit sometimes positively Munchausenesque!) adventures of a 20-year-old Bengali man named Shankar Ray Choudhuri. He has long dreamed of being a derring-do explorer in Africa, but seems destined to spend his life much more mundanely, working as an administrator at the local jute mill in his small Bengali town instead. Happily, however, fate steps in, in the shape of a relative who secures for Shankar a job in Kenya, as the station-master of a tiny railway terminus miles from anywhere.

Shankar accepts the position with alacrity, seeing it as a stepping stone to his becoming a daring Dark Continent explorer. However, his long-treasured romantic daydreams of Africa are soon shattered by the reality of living in such a remote spot there, when he encounters a ferocious man-eating lion, which he amazingly manages to out-run (and eventually shoot dead) even though he has injured his leg, and a deadly black mamba that sneaks into his railway cabin one evening and bites him, but which he miraculously survives with no more than a bandaged hand (in the original novel, conversely, he is not bitten at all).

 

Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay, author of the original novel Chander Pahar upon which this movie is based (public domain)

One day, while exploring his isolated little kingdom beyond the railway terminus, Shankar spies a middle-aged man, seemingly close to death, lying high up in a tree while a pack of hungry hyaenas repeatedly leap up towards him, hoping to haul him down and devour him. Armed with his trusty hunting rifle, however, Shankar soon scares them away, and then rescues the man, carrying him back to his cabin.

The man informs Shankar that he is a Portuguese explorer and gold-seeker named Diego Alvarez, who is able to speak Bengali and English (a consequence of this being that from then on, the dialogue spoken between them in the movie switches constantly – and sometimes very confusingly – from one language to another), and during his recuperation, tended to by Shankar, Alvarez thrills him with dramatic stories of his real-life African adventures.

In particular, some years earlier Alvarez and a fellow explorer, Jim Carter, had journeyed to an inhospitable and virtually inaccessible arid land of high hills and even higher mountains known as the Richtersveld, situated in the northwestern corner of what is today South Africa's Northern Cape province. They were seeking a legendary diamond mine supposedly hidden inside a cave deep within a mysterious Richtersveld mountain known as Chander Pahar – the Mountain of the Moon.

According to local legend, however, this diamond mine is guarded by the cave's monstrous inhabitant – a gigantic beast still-undescribed by science, but which for reasons never explained either in this movie or in Bandyopadhyay's original novel is known here as the bunyip (despite the latter name being in reality an aboriginal name specifically applied to Australia's most famous indigenous mystery beast!). Moreover, not long after reaching Chander Pahar the two men swiftly and all too tragically discover that the bunyip is no legend, when it confronts Carter and slaughters him. Alvarez flees back to civilization, but vows to return one day, to avenge Carter and once again seek Chander Pahar's hidden cache of diamonds.

 

Full cover of the English-subtitled DVD version of Chander Pahar (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Listening to Alvarez's bold exploits is more than sufficient to inspire Shankar to quit his station-master job and set out with Alvarez on his long-planned return to Chander Pahar. During their arduous journey there, they narrowly survive the explosive eruption of a volcano that hasn't even been documented by the Western world, but before they have chance to seek out the diamond cave's gemstones, they are confronted by its horrific guardian – the bunyip. Shankar freezes in terror, so Alvarez races to his rescue, only for the bunyip to turn its attention to him instead, attacking and mortally wounding him with its pair of immense walrus-like fangs, before departing into the night, leaving behind a weeping, devastated Shankar, who cradles the dying Alvarez in his arms until he passes away a few moments later.

After burying Alvarez, Shankar is now entirely alone and sees no option but to return to civilization. However, he loses his way, and accidentally encounters the diamond cave, but without suspecting that this is what it is. After entering the cave, Shankar becomes lost again, but by collecting some pebbles that he finds inside it and using them to mark his trail to prevent himself from walking aimlessly in circles, he finally discovers an exit and escapes, taking with him a few pebbles as souvenirs of his time spent there.

In his attempts to find a route back home, Shankar stumbles upon another cave, and when he enters it he discovers the skeleton of the Italian explorer Attilio Gatti, who had been betrayed and abandoned by his own diamond-seeking party some time earlier. Gatti had managed to hide some uncut diamonds from them, however, and left a note stating where they are and that whoever finds his remains can take the diamonds for themselves if they will give him a Christian burial.

This Shankar does, but is astonished to find that Gatti's uncut diamonds look just like the supposed pebbles that he, Shankar, had found in the previous cave and had used for marking his trail there. At last he realizes that he had discovered the diamond cave after all, albeit unknowingly, and those 'pebbles' from it that he'd retained as souvenirs were priceless uncut diamonds!

 

 

Photo-stills of the ferocious bunyip (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Trekking through the jungle again after burying Gatti, Shankar rediscovers the cave, and his fury over Alvarez's slaughter by the bunyip  resurfaces, spurring him on in seeking to destroy this monstrous creature once and for all. So he devises and builds a concealed, deadly trap, then purposefully lures the bunyip towards it, using himself as bait. The trap functions perfectly, impaling the murderous creature on a series of long wooden spikes, thereby incapacitating it and enabling Shankar to shoot his fearsome foe dead with his rifle while safely suspended in a tree far above it and out of its reach.

Following an ill-advised decision to seek home not by continuing to trek over the jungle hills but instead by venturing into the Kalahari Desert, however, Shankar realizes all too quickly that one sand dune looks very like another, especially when his skills at reading a compass prove less than adept. Finally, dying of fatigue and dehydration, and terrorized by hyaenas, he decides to end his life with what in his thirst-induced delirium he believes to be his very last bullet – but just as he is about to do so, he spots a road far below him, with some vehicles travelling slowly along it. Summoning one final spurt of energy, Shankar staggers down the hill, shouting and waving his arms – and they see him! The vehicles are being driven by a survey team, who promptly rescue him and take him to a hospital in what was then Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), where he recuperates and amazes everyone with his tales of his exploits, just as Alvarez had previously amazed him with his own.

The movie ends with Shankar, now fully restored to good health and having become a very rich man after selling most of his diamonds (and sending the others to his family back home in Bengal), as well as his story to a newspaper. So what are his plans now for the future? This is Shankar we are talking about, so there can only be one answer to that question – he charts a vessel to take him by river upon further adventures as he journeys back to Chander Pahar, the Mountain of the Moon.

By the way, I should point out that whereas all of the other major characters in this movie (and novel) are fictitious, there really was an Italian explorer of Africa named Attilio Gatti, who journeyed to the real Mountains of the Moon (the nickname of the Ruwenzori Mountains on the border of Uganda with the Democratic Republic of the Congo) but thankfully he did not die abandoned in a remote cave. Instead, after a highly successful career not only as an explorer but also as a popular author and pioneering wildlife film-maker, he ended his days peacefully in Vermont, USA, aged 72, on 1 July 1969.

 

The real Attilio Gatti, featured with his wife Ellen in a 1939 advertisement (public domain)

At the time of its production, Chander Pahar had the highest budget in the history of Bengali cinema (roughly equivalent to US$ 2 million), and it shows. Filmed on location in several different but all extremely photogenic sites in South Africa (including the Drakensberg Mountains, the Kruger National Park, and the Kalahari Desert), as well as in Kenya, Uganda, and West Bengal in India, it is brimming throughout with spectacular scenes of wildlife, and stars Indian acting/producing/singing megastar Dev as Shankar, alongside celebrated South African actor-poet Gérard Rudolf as Diego Alvarez, and South African rock star Martin Cito Otto as Jim Carter.

Nevertheless, this historic movie has not been without its critics. Some have opined that Dev's portrayal of Shankar was unconvincing, which only makes me wonder if they watched the same movie as I did. Dev plays Shankar as an excitable, dream-driven, achingly-naïve young man, barely adult but ebulliently energetic and totally indefatigable, who is finally realizing his life-long ambition to explore Africa – all of which is exactly what Shankar is, and how he was verbally portrayed by Bandyopadhyay in his novel. Rudolf received better reviews as Alvarez, providing an older, far more experienced traveller's wisdom and practical restraint to Shankar's periodic bouts of over-enthusiasm and under-thinking.

Another aspect of the movie that has attracted criticism is the bunyip – which is why I have held off from describing this monster until now, as I felt that it needed its own separate discussion here. In Bandyopadhyay's novel, the bunyip is never directly seen – a shadow of it moving outside the tent of Shankar and Alvarez one evening is as much as is offered to the readers, leaving the rest to their imagination. In contrast, this movie presents the viewers with a truly memorable CGI bunyip in all its hideous glory, and gory activity, but which some reviewers have denigrated for destroying the monster's mystique, and others for what they considered to be its inferior quality (similar criticisms regarding their quality, or lack of it, have also been aimed at the CGI-engendered volcanic eruption scenes).

As revealed earlier in this review via a series of photo-stills, the bunyip is undeniably a startling creation – unlike any beast known to science, that's for sure. A waddling, feline-faced abomination with a swollen, toad-like body and an exceedingly long, whip-like tail, plus a huge and revoltingly-vascular, pendant throat-sac, livid crimson in colour and hanging down so far that the creature seems in permanent danger of tripping over it when galumphing after one of its potential human victims. Most noticeable of all, however, is its pair of truly enormous vertical fangs that any prehistoric sabre-toothed cat would have given its high teeth for (so to speak!). (Moreover, a Kindle e-book edition of Bandyopadhyay's novel actually depicts the bunyip on the front cover as a bona fide living sabre-tooth.)

 

A Kindle edition of Bandyopadhyay's novel Chander Pahar in which the bunyip is depicted as a living sabre-tooth (© Kindle – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)

Interestingly, however, this terrifying apparition does recall a traditional African mystery beast known as the dingonek (click here for my account of it and comparable cryptids in my ShukerNature cryptozoology blog), and which is actually mentioned in Bandyopadhyay's novel in addition to the bunyip. In contrast, as noted earlier, I have yet to discover why Bandyopadhyay applied the name of an exclusively Australian water monster to his terrestrial African mystery beast. According to traditional African lore, conversely, the dingonek is amphibious in nature, i.e. both an adept swimmer in rivers and a formidable adversary on land – so why didn't Bandyopadhyay simply call his monster the dingonek instead of distinguishing it from the latter?

Another criticism that I've seen when reading reviews of Chander Pahar is that the movie's lengthy opening scene is entirely superfluous, serving no purpose whatsoever. This scene depicts Shankar as already an explorer in Africa, and being chased by an adult bull elephant, but leading the creature towards a trap that he had earlier (off-screen) created – only for Shankar himself to become accidentally entwined in a trip-wire noose that hauls him up through the air, leaving him dangling so high above the ground that even his proboscidean pursuer and other approaching elephants cannot reach him with their trunks. He then wakes up – it had all been just a dream, albeit a nightmarish one, and he is in his bed at home in Bengal. Far from being superfluous, however, this scene serves a vital role – for not only does it offer the movie's viewers an immediate example of how obsessed Shankar is with becoming an African explorer but also, crucially, it is this dream that inspires Shankar's subsequent creation in real life of the deadly trap that snares the bunyip. Indeed, Shankar even works into that climactic encounter – but this time as a deliberate escape ploy – the trip-wire noose that hauls him up through the air, out of reach of the bunyip while he shoots it dead.

Overall, and certainly not for the first time with movies, I disagree diametrically with those who have criticized Chander Pahar – imho, it is a thrilling, visual delight that kept me enthralled throughout its not inconsiderable 148-minute running time. In addition, it constitutes a very bold, decisive surge forward in the history of Bengali cinema, which until then had scarcely ventured into the field of adventure movies typified by such Hollywood blockbusters as the Indiana Jones feature films, for instance. Consequently, those viewers who agree with me will be pleased to know that Shankar clearly survives his journey back to the Mountain of the Moon, because in 2017 his exploits continue in a second movie, Amazon Obhijaan. This time he is seeking ancient treasure in South America, but once again confronting all manner of dangers along the way, including a predatory giant anaconda. At present, this latter movie is the highest-grossing Bengali film of all time (grossing US$ 7.47 million worldwide), with Chander Pahar in second place (grossing US$ 3.41 million worldwide). So, critics notwithstanding, Shankar and his movies' makers are clearly doing something right!

If you'd like to experience for yourself a glimpse of the thrills and spills that Shankar experiences during his search for the Mountain of the Moon and its hidden diamonds, be sure to click here to watch an official Chander Pahar trailer on YouTube showcasing its very stirring title song. (You can also watch the entire movie free here on YT, but only in the form of an Odia-language version with no English subtitles, sadly.) And don't forget to click here if you'd like to view an excerpt from Shankar's daunting to-the-death encounter with the belligerent bunyip!

To view a complete chronological listing of all of my Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE, and please click HERE to view a complete fully-clickable alphabetical listing of them.

 

Publicity poster for the American cinema release of Chander Pahar (© Kamaleshwar Mukherjee/Shree Venkatesh Films – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)