Review of Dark of the Sun (1968) by Kevin R — 15 Sep 2015
I believe this film is the first to ever use a chainsaw as a weapon, predating "The Wizard of Gore," "Last House on the Left" and the most infamous chainsaw film, "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
" The chainsaw fight comes early in the film, despite the chainsaw being prominently featured on the movie poster. Despite that, the mere thought of someone being torn apart by a roaring chainsaw is indicative of the the type of brutality that this film had the audacity to present.
On one level, this film is about the atrocities of war, but I more got the feeling that this film was a classy production of an almost grindhouse action flick. Rod Taylor plays a mercenary hired to by a company to retrieve diamonds worth millions in the midst of a civil war in the African Congo.
Besides chainsaws, there's wanton murder, sexual assaults, torture and more. This certainly isn't as rough as a Takashi Miike film, but for it's time, it's pretty startling. Directed by ace cinematography Jack Cardiff, who only made a handful of films, this one stands out as something pretty original for it's time.
It certainly falls within the men-on-a-mission sub-genre (ALA "The Dirty Dozen" or "Guns of Navarone") but it has a grit that I hadn't seen in many of those films. It's a dated film for sure, but for fans of men-on-a-mission film or people interesting in seeing something that's kind of proto-grindhouse, it's an awfully good flick.
Yvette Mimieux and Jim Brown also appear in the film.
This review of Dark of the Sun (1968) was written by Kevin R on 15 Sep 2015.
Dark of the Sun has generally received positive reviews.
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