verbusen Review of Dark of the Sun

Dark of the Sun (1968)

You Wont See Many Hardcore African on Euro White Rapes Like This

[9/10 · 17 May 2007]

Take one part Von Ryan's Express, one part Wild Geese, one part The Road Warrior, and one part Dogs Of War and you get a kick butt flick called Dark Of The Sun! I'm at my job and to my great fortune I tuned to TCM Europe and caught this in its entirety, I was pretty blown away. I can just imagine the response the movie going public of 1968 America had, with race riots and MLK Jr's assassination and all, they probably really hated it. The movie depicts what I thought I was going to see in "Guns at Batasi", Africans revolting violently against unarmed Euro White civilians in the heart of Africa. They definitely do not to my knowledge (unless possibly a South African movie), make many movies that show the scenes that this movie presents. White on Black hate, yes those are made, but not the other way around. I was not all that interested in this at first but it definitely got a whole lot better when they get the diamonds, I got off my far away seat and got real close to the TV, the scenes were just totally unexpected. I thought they were going to get away, ala a 1950's Clark Gable/John Wayne adventure (which are great also), but when I saw that caboose get separated and then it started rolling backwards I said, now thats something to watch! It's totally Wild Geese doomsday mission from that point on, except its a a hell of a lot bloodier. BTW, those are my favorite action movies, where all hell breaks loose and the "good guys" take a lot of casualties, much more edge of your seat that way! The only thing that I guess kept this from a restricted rating was at the time they didn't have one yet, this movie may have been a mover to placing ratings on movies because they came out shortly afterward, I mean it's that action and graphic packed. The ending is overlong with it's morality play but it's worth watching just for the town scene when the mission starts to go horribly wrong. Here's a spoiler, a white Afrikaner merc gets captured by the horde and is bent over a pool table without his pants, ummm if thats not hardcore I don't know what is (well, the white nun being raped was right up there also, and the white guy being doused with gasoline while being dragged from a motorcycle was also really brutal). I thought about The Road Warrior when I saw that part of the movie, it was probably inspired by this great unknown action flick, that was probably a little close to the truth on stuff that happened during the Congo's history. 9 of 10 very entertaining for action film viewers.