THE FILM
FILM DIRECTOR: Andrew V. McLaglen
SCREENWRITER: Reginald Rose
FILM STARS: Richard Burton. Roger Moore, Richard Harris, Hardy Kruger, Stewart Granger, Winston Ntshona, John Kani, Jack Watson, Frank Finlay, Barry Foster, Ronald Fraser, David Ladd, Jeff Corey
COUNTRY: Great Britain – Switzerland
THIS BOOK
AUTHOR: Daniel Carney
TYPE: Novel
PUBLISHER: Corgi
THIS EDITION PUBLISHED: 1978
COUNTRY: Great Britain
COVER: Paperback
THE ORIGINAL BOOK
ORIGINAL AUTHOR: As Above
YEAR FIRST PUBLISHED: 1977
ORIGINAL BOOK TITLE: The film title
NOTES
GENRE: Action, Adventure
WORDS: I saw this film in the cinema as a kid. I loved it. Look at the cast … Moore, Burton, Harris, Kruger, Granger – what’s there not to love? Perhaps because of this film those actors all became favourites of mine. This is a high adventure mercenary film set in Africa. Author Carney, had an an unpublished novel titled The Thin White Line which he could not get published until a chance meeting with film producer Euan Lloyd. Lloyd loved the story, and purchased the film rights. Carney’s novel was then published as The Wild Geese just before the film’s release. The film (and the book) is high on action (with some philosophising) and not politically correct, though luckily, the mission they are on, is a noble one. Well, “noble” by mercenary standards. Of course, after seeing the film, I went out and bought the book (new, from a book store … most unusual for me). It’s a great read or at least it was for a boy in his early teens. The screenplay was by Reginald Rose who wrote the very different “12 Angry Men” twenty years earlier.
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A cracking movie. Mercenaries in Africa were a fascinating subject in the 1960s and 70s. Frederick Forsyth wrote ‘The Dogs of War’ in 1975, (which has some plot similarities with the WG, although WG is a better story)and the main characters were modelled on European and South African mercenaries he’d seen in the Biafra War. Unlike some war movies , the cast are age appropriate- Burton was younger than Mad Mike Hoare, famous Anglo-Irish mercenary leader in the Congo .
One aspect of the movie I found interesting was that Roger Moore could do a convincing action role without lapsing into parody. Makes you think the Bond movies of the 1970s could have been quite different.
Yes, I will have to watch it again. The other great mercenary film was “Dark of the Sun” (1968) with Rod Taylor. There seemed to be an awful lot of mercenary films around in the 70s didn’t there? then again I suppose they wer around in the 50s though they wer called “soldiers of fortune” and “adventurers”.
In interesting observation about Roger Moore. I havent watched it for a while but I thought he got some humorous asides in. He certainly was the most flippant of the mercenaries. Not hard when you have Burton, Kruger and Harris by your side. Now that you mention it all his post-Saint lead role work is laced with humour or paraody (The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), Crossplot (1969) and (maybe, if I remember correctly) Shout at the Devil (1976) are exceptions off the top of my head). Of course I like 70s joke-y Bond. The films were certainly more fun than the recent boring as batshit Bond films. Bond film tie in novels to follow one day …