![]() ![]() That's unfortunate because the underrated, funny Adams is a good match for Hope, while Ekberg is clearly past her prime as a blonde bombshell (the filmmakers struggle to hide her sizable gut) and she's dubbed in any event. The awkward structure also suggests Adams was Hope's original leading lady, but that her part was whittled down to a basically thankless supporting part - she all but disappears during the climax - while Ekberg's was beefed up once she came aboard. At 17:58 there's a strange jump-cut as Adams and Hope are chatting aboard a passenger plane, with Adams's make-up and the length of her hair suddenly changing dramatically, as if the two bits were shots weeks apart. Though Hope does get to interact with a some African wildlife (and a few Indian elephants), Hatari! it's not.Īnd apparently the film was constantly tinkered with during production, Edie Adams later claiming her role in the story literally changed from day to day. Everything else was shot in England and in front of process screens, none of which is any more convincing than the average Jungle Jim movie. CALL ME BWANA SERIESIn any case, the intent was to film Call Me Bwana on location in Kenya, and Edie Adams even went through a painful series of inoculations in preparation, but for various reasons only a second unit crew ended up going to Africa. All this might be true, but it also speaks of Broccoli's ill will toward both Connery and Saltzman. CALL ME BWANA MOVIEAccording to Broccoli's autobiography, Sean Connery rejected various projects intended to spotlight him, while Saltzman nixed another idea for a movie starring the Beatles in favor of the Hope picture. The project was the result of Eon's initial arrangements with distributor and co-financer United Artists, the idea being that Eon would produce one Bond and one non-Bond movie per year. Ezra Mungo (Lionel Jeffries, in a role intended for Terry-Thomas) - actually Soviet agents. Landing in Africa - the country goes unnamed, but a map suggests it's the Congo - Merriwether teams up with a voluptuous blonde scientist, Luba (Anita Ekberg), and her missionary father, Dr. Nonetheless, to Africa he goes, accompanied by female security agent Frederica Larden (Edie Adams). Merriwether, however, is a fraud, pilfering material for his bestsellers from his explorer uncle's secret diary. When an unmanned NASA space probe, returning from a historic mission gathering moon rocks, crashes in Darkest Africa, government agents draft famed African explorer Matt Merriwether (Hope) to retrieve it before the Russians can get their unwashed mitts on it. Part of MGM's "Limited Edition Collection" of DVD-Rs, manufactured-on-demand discs, Call Me Bwana gets a blah but adequate 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer with no extra features. Further, soon after its release, a billboard for Call Me Bwana was central to a pivotal, amusing scene in From Russia with Love. No (1962) and From Russia with Love (1963), Call Me Bwana was made by many of the same crew, resulting in a kind of freakish genre hybrid: a Bob Hope comedy that sort of resembles a 007 picture. ![]() Broccoli and Harry Saltzman's Eon Productions that wasn't a James Bond movie. Mainly though Call Me Bwana is of interest because it was the only production of Albert R. The picture was probably also influenced by John Wayne's Hatari! (1962), though it's possible Call Me Bwana's wheels may already have been in motion before Wayne's movie was released. Hope is less energetic than usual and he's not helped by Gordon Douglas's traffic cop direction but the jokes (credited to Nate Monaster, Mort Lachman, Bill Larkin, and Johanna Harwood) are generally better than those found in Hope's previous made-in-Britain sci-fi spy romp, Road to Hong Kong (1962), which was better-directed but weaker in other ways. A fair-to-middling, overlong Bob Hope spy comedy with sci-fi elements, Call Me Bwana (1963) is intermittently funny with a smattering of genuinely clever ideas and a good supporting cast. ![]()
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