Rhino!

Ivan Tors adds some his usual grab bag collection of silent plot points to some fine wild life shots by South African producer/cameraman Sven Persson to come up with a kiddie matinée for the 1960s. Harry Guardino and Robert Culp, both actors with far better real-life senses of humor than they were ever permitted to show on screen, play their roles as a poacher and zoologist straight, alas. Lalo Schifrin provides some of his typically excellent music. Alas, there are a few too many dramatic stings to get the audience's blood up for it to be really good. Ivan Tors was a well-intentioned, didactic director/producer who decided the best way to combine his passions was to create this sort of show to propagandize kids. He got some top talent to work with him. Too bad he saddled them with trite scripts. Still, the result is enjoyable if you turn your brain off.

In picturesque Africa, kindly zoologist Robert Culp (as Jim Hanlon) saves a lion who has lost his appetite by tranquilizing the animal and performing some dental work. He is on the continent to help save African animals from extinction. The rhino, especially white rhino, is especially vulnerable. Attractive in slacks and slicked hair, Mr. Culp clashes with scruffy, trigger-happy Harry Guardino (as Alec Burnett). Unaware Mr. Guardino is there to poach Rhinos for profit, Culp hires him as a guide. Beautiful blonde Shirley Eaton plays Guardino's girlfriend. Crocodiles like her pretty feet. The location footage contributed by Sven Persson and Lamar Boren looks all right - but it's mismatched, appears roughly edited, and ends up unappealing. *** Rhino! (5/20/64) Ivan Tors ~ Robert Culp, Harry Guardino, Shirley Eaton, Harry Mekela

This was perhaps the first film I ever saw at a cinema, and is therefore at the edge of my childhood memory. I don't remember much of it except a person in a Jeep pick-up that was being attacked by a rhino. The rhino, with a somewhat more horizontal horn than normal, was repeatedly ramming the Jeep's doors and almost skewering the person inside. I seem to recall also that the Jeep was painted in a zebra stripe pattern. There were other exciting scenes of hunts and chases, something like a rodeo with very dangerous animals. No doubt there was also some sort of love sub-plot but this did not imprint on my eight year old memory. I don't recall much else of the film, but the sight of the rhino's horn piercing the Jeep's doors was pretty frightening at the time.