This movie has just been issued on an R4 PAL disc available through Australian retailers so it's nice to see a pristine copy of it at last rather than a very well worn Beta tape. It has come in for some unfair criticism as a racist tract which it isn't at all. The good or bad old Colonial days existed, like it or not, and its just anachronistic to apply todays values to life some 50 years ago.The film makes the Mau Mau out to be the villains, the Hamas of their day,and so thought the settlers. Only the most prescient of them saw independence ahead; this is set several years before McMillan's Winds of Change speech. Rank stalwarts Borgade and McKenna give good performances as lovers and besieged farmers and Donald Sinden looks great as the local police chief. View it for what it is. We can't erase history, good or bad, like we can airbrush cigarettes from old photos.
