East of Sudan

In late 1884, during the height of the Mahdist insurrection in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, the Mahdist forces attack Barash, a British outpost 200 miles upriver from Khartoum.

Four people escape from the attack in a riverboat: Private Richard Baker, a soldier in the British army; Murchison, an inexperienced subaltern in the army; Asua, the daughter of the local Emir; and Asua's British governess, Margret Woodville.

Over the course of the journey, the group find themselves in perilous dangers on the Nile and its banks. Facing off against nature, Arab slavers and a beleaguered Negro tribe the slavers prey on, they are saved by King Gondoko's missionary-raised brother Kimrasi, who then joins them.

Soldiers Murchison and Baker frequently clash, while Baker and Margaret fall in love.

Once in Khartoum, they find the revolt has reached it and the men join the fight...

• Anthony Quayle as Private Richard Baker
• Sylvia Syms as Miss Margaret Woodville
• Derek Fowlds as Murchison
• Johnny Sekka as Kimrasi
• Jenny Agutter as Asua
• Derek Blomfield as Second Major

Producer Charles Schneer made it after a series of fantasies with Ray Harryhausen. This and Siege of the Saxons were made over 15 days using stock footage. "Columbia had a lot of unused footage in their library", said the producer. "If 10 percent or less of a film made in the United Kingdom was comprised of stock footage, you received a government subsidy. I decided that would be a good commercial opportunity, so I made both pictures that way. I took the big action sequences out of Columbia's library." Siege of the Saxons used The Black Knight and East of Sudan used footage from Beyond Mombassa.[1]

Anthony Quayle and Sylvia Syms were signed in February 1964. It was Quayle's first film since Lawrence of Arabia.[2]

All of the large-scale action scenes were stock footage from the films The Four Feathers (1939), Odongo and Safari (both 1956).[3][4]

The film was released in the US on a double bill with First Men in the Moon (1964), also directed by Juran.[5]

The Monthly Film Bulletin called it "shamelessly unoriginal hokum with Anthony Quayle as a poor man's Stewart Granger and Sylvia Syms as a ditto Deborah Kerr, some laboured tongue-in-cheek humour and an inordinate amount of stockpile animal footage. Nathan Juran could direct this sort of thing blindfolded and for once would appear to have done so."[6]

• East of Sudan on IMDb
• East of Sudan at BFI
• East of Sudan at Colonial Film
• East of Sudan at the TCM Movie Database