Image Not Available
Blood Sacrifice of the Simbazi!
1965-05-01
N/A
77 min
In Africa, a professional hunter kills a male lion which is sacred to a local tribe which also practices voodoo; and when he returns to England, he finds himself deteriorating under the influence of a curse which they have placed on him for his sacrilege.
Now then, where to start.... I am a big fan of the ultimately rather tragic Dennis Price; he was superb in "Kind Hearts and Coronets" (1949) so thought I'd defy the reviews and give it a chance. Well, you know what - it's dreadful nonsense. Bryant Haliday is a big game hunter who commits the ultimate taboo for a local tribe of voodoo worshippers - he kills a Simla (not the one from the cartoon, you understand...). This is sacrilegious to the locals - and so when Haliday gets back home, suitably cursed, he begins to have hallucinations that he is being chased across rural England by spear-yielding warriors... Now anyone who has ever tried running through a grassy, thistle filled field clad only in a loincloth will appreciate just how difficult - decidedly jaggy and slippy, bestrewn with cow pats - it can be; and that's without a man in skintight white denim taking potshots at you; or indeed, pointing his jeep in your direction... The film is simply woeful; the action scenes filmed and edited as it were a jigsaw puzzle and the music was so interfering as to render the whole thing amongst the worst example of British cinema I have ever had the misfortune to watch.
