Titreenp SERIOUSLY. This is what the crap Hollywood still puts out?

Sexylocher Masterful Movie

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

GusF It's not on the same level as Hammer's best adventure films such as "A Challenge for Robin Hood", "The Devil-Ship Pirates" and their previous East India Company film "The Stranglers of Bombay" but it's great fun. Based on its title, I had assumed that the film took place in Afghanistan during the First Anglo-Afghan War (1839-1842) but it actually takes place in India in 1850. The protagonist is Robert Case, a half-Indian lieutenant in the service of the East India Company who is convicted of cowardice under dubious circumstances and joins a group of Indian rebels. The film has a good plot and the characters are strong. I liked the fact that both Colonel Drewe and the rebel Ali Khan were presented as being brutal leaders. Neither side was whiter than white so there is a real sense that Case is conflicted, which I appreciated.Neither Ronald Lewis, who appeared in one of Hammer's best films "Taste of Fear", nor Oliver Reed, in his final Hammer film, make very convincing Indians / Anglo-Indians but they're both very compelling in their respective roles as Case and Ali Khan. The film also has nice appearances in major supporting roles by Duncan Lamont in one of his biggest Hammer roles, Glyn Houston (a much better actor than his elder brother Donald) and Yvonne Romain (another unconvincing Indian but never mind). The weakest link in the cast is Inigo Jackson but he is only in the film for its first half. I'm assuming that Hammer regular Marne Maitland, who was actually Indian, was not in the film because he was busy since he would obviously have been a perfect fit, hence why he had a major role in "The Stranglers of Bombay". It's quite funny considering that he was cast as a particularly unconvincing Chinese man in "The Terror of the Tongs".In contrast to the exotic locations of bigger budget Hammer adventure films such as "She" (which was shot in Israel) and "One Million Years B.C." (which was shot in Lanzarote), this film was shot in rural England and the attempts to pass it off as India are fairly unconvincing. It's a little distracting, to be honest. John Gilling is a good director but he's no Terence Fisher and I don't think that action scenes were really his forte as the ones here aren't up to much. The film loses its momentum a little in its second half, even though it is only 77 minutes long.

malcolmgsw This is an extremely curious film from Hammer.They did look to diversify from their Hammer horrors and this is one of the results.The plot seems quite strange and very muddled.What is more it is difficult to take seriously.Normally in an adventure film you know which side to support.However in this film it is difficult to know who is worse.The Army comes out of it just as badly as the warring tribes.Also here we have a film as late as 1967 where it was thought not to be a problem having a white European actor putting on make up to play an Asian character.The plot revolves around the fact that Lewis is discharged from the army and imprisoned on very circumstantial evidence and racial prejudice.I have to say that "Carry On Up The Khyber" is a far better film and a lot more fun too.

Leofwine_draca While Hammer Studios produced some fairly able historical adventures in the early 1960s - titles such as the serviceable FURY AT SMUGGLER'S BAY and THE DEVIL-SHIP PIRATES - they also made their fair share of stinkers, of which THE BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR is probably the worst. This is an entirely stodgy costume adventure, made on a low budget and with a script which feels like it was rushed out in a hurry.The story is cheap and carries some distinctly colonial racial overtones, not least in the presence of anti-hero Ronald Lewis, blacked-up as a half-caste for his role. Lewis must be the singular most obnoxious heroic character in a Hammer film, a guy who I actually despised throughout much of the running time; were we really supposed to feel sorry for him after he swapped allegiances like that?Elsewhere, it's sub-ZULU antics throughout, enlivened by a handful of larger-scale battle sequences which employ some dodgy back projection which saps them of realism. Once again Hammer has an eye for a distinguished supporting cast, but most of them are wasted here; the only ones who come out of it well are Duncan Lamont and Katherine Woodville. Oliver Reed is cast as the bad guy but I feel he would have made a much more compelling protagonist. In any case, this is as dull as dishwater and one of Hammer's weakest efforts.

dinky-4 Even those with a fondness for those "Northwest Frontier" movies set in the British Raj of the 1800's will probably be disappointed by this minor, unpersuasive, and somewhat uncharacteristic entry from Hammer Films. The costumes have that clean, new look -- as if they just came from a rental shop -- and the handful of sets are too tidy and well-lit to be anything other than studio creations. Even the rocks have a fiberglass look. More troubling than the film's skimpy budget, however, is the casting of its main character. He's supposed to be half-English, half-Indian -- one of those chaps who's worked his way up in the ranks of the British Army but who feels he's still regarded with hostility and suspicion by his colleagues. Not only does Ronald Lewis lack the face for this part, (there's nothing at all Indian about him), but he's also short of the darkly-compelling charisma which might make this character "work." He comes across as a provincial English actor who's dressed up in left-over garb from a production of "Kismet." In his defense, however, it must be said that the script gives him little to work with since his character is poorly developed and too often seems simply like the victim of events going on around him.Oliver Reed might have been a better choice for the lead but here he plays the villain -- a rebellious chieftain who's said to be "half-mad." Unfortunately, this gives him license to indulge in some theatrical behavior which is more embarrassing than enlivening.At one point a captured British soldier is whipped by the rebels but even this sure-fire scene is too poorly staged to arouse much interest. (Why didn't the rebels tear the soldier's shirt all the way off? Didn't they take Flogging 101?)