dan.adams Well, my old mother in law enjoyed it! I've given it a 5 because of the confusion it created(pour moi).Campbell's Kingdom is up there,in the Rockies.Nearby,a construction gang have built a dam-for hydro-electricity.The plan is to allow water to flow over the dam and into CK.Where they are finding oil. The construction team are into sabotage of the well diggers efforts.I got all that.It was when an inclinator was used to go up to the CK land I got confused.This mountain climbing device took us up into the snowy peaks of the Rockies.Where the prospective oil field was. Where then,was the dam that would flood the oil field?Well,it must have been even higher! It just didn't make sense.Later scenes showed the dam breaking and doing a bit of flooding.It was well and truly above the oil field. A rousing matinée tale but hard to digest geographically.

Terrell-4 There was a time in adventure novels and some movies when the hero was motivated and decent; when the bad guy was clearly unscrupulous; where romance was discrete and sex was nonexistent; where the writing was clear, descriptive and straightforward. With Ralph Hammond-Innes (writing as Hammond Innes) we learned, thoroughly researched, about the North Sea, the Arabian Desert, whaling, Australia, Labrador, elephants, Morocco, the Arctic, the South Seas and a lot more. All this was found in his satisfyingly thick adventure novels. His best, in my view, were written between the late Forties and the late Sixties. Campbell's Kingdom is one of them...and the movie's not bad, either. There's gorgeous Canadian Rocky Mountain scenery, a ramshackle mining town named Come Lucky, a deep, forested valley called Campbell's Kingdom, naked greed, ruthless motivation, virile action...and Bruce Campbell, played by Dirk Bogarde. Campbell travels to Come Lucky from England to see the high, cold valley his grandfather left him. The old man, who for years believed there was oil to be discovered in his valley, left it to Bruce hoping the young man could prove the dream was true. Bruce came to Campbell's Kingdom and Come Lucky thinking he has just six months to live. All he really wanted was to find a place to feel sorry for himself. Instead, Bruce finds himself up against Owen Morgan (Stanley Baker), the ruthless, driven construction boss who is building a big hydroelectric dam that, when shortly completed, will flood Campbell's Kingdom. If oil is found, it will stop the dam. If the dam is completed, it makes oil moot. Morgan rules in Come Lucky, and the men whose jobs depend on the dam are ready to play just as rough as Morgan wants them to. Campbell discovers there just may be some truth to old Campbell's claims, doesn't like being pushed by Morgan, and decides he won't sell. He'll find out the truth. He's aided by Jean Lucas (Barbara Murray) a young woman who helps run the small hotel in Come Lucky and has a story of her own, and by Boy Bladen (Michael Craig), who wrote an engineering report Morgan fiddled with, who really likes Jean, and who is just as decent as Bruce. By the time James Robertson Justice shows up as James MacDonald, who runs a small oil-drilling rig, it looks like rough action is going to break loose right in the middle of some beautiful scenery. It does. The climax is a terrific sequence that demonstrates dramatically what happens to a dam built with poor grade cement. One other moral: Fresh air and hard work can do wonders with an illness that promised death. Campbell's kingdom gets off to a bit of a slow start as we learn about Bruce Campbell's health, about Campbell's Kingdom, the people of Come Lucky and the degree of Owen Morgan's ruthlessness. A quarter of the way in, though, the excitement kicks in. For the rest of the movie Bruce has to meet head on one crisis after another. Bruce Campbell finds unexpected reserves of resourcefulness requiring split-second timing, perilous tram rides, mountain road avalanches and blown bridges. No one beats another into the ground but there's a lot of action. I've never thought Dirk Bogarde was convincing as a rough and tumble type, but he's much better here in most of the movie leading his few troops and outguessing Morgan than as the soulful, seemingly-dying-with-quiet-nobility Bruce Campbell we first encountered. In his younger years Bogarde knew how to give that sad look with a weary, resigned little smile that made the hearts of middle-aged matrons flutter. Stanley Baker, on the other hand, had the kind of face that just looks mean. Campbell uses his brain more often than Morgan, and that helps. They were both good enough actors to make the friction between their two characters work. It would be an injustice to Barbara Murray not to mention that, perfectly acceptable as she was in movies like Campbell's Kingdom, she reached her absolute prime, and I mean prime, 17 years later as Madame Max Goesler in The Pallisers. She gave luster to maturity, experience, wit, desirability and charm. Four movies have been made from Hammon-Innes' books. The Wreck of the Mary Deare (1959) manages to turn a suspenseful story into a dull courtroom slog. Hell Below Zero (1954), based on The White South, was turned into an Alan Ladd vehicle. It's not bad. I've not seen Snowbound (1948), based on The Lonely Skier. So it's best to start out with his novels. Pick one at random from the Fifties and dive in. You might like them a lot.

ianlouisiana In the 1950s - in stark contrast to today - people were queueing up to leave Britain.Fed up with post -war austerity,rationing,low wages,class distinction and crap weather hundreds of thousands opted for healthier,more prosperous climes.Many became" £10 Poms ",taking an assisted passage to Australia,I barely escaped that fate myself,my father - an electrical engineer - being offered a promotion and a move to the south coast a few months before we would have sailed.Others made for other former colonies that offered a fresh start,Canada being the most popular alternative destination.To any waverers amongst them,the magnificent setting of "Campbells Kingdom" might well have acted as the clincher.The actors,the plot,the script,all are secondary to the majestic great outdoors that dominates the film.It is a "Kingdom" indeed fit for a king. Taken from a Hammond Innes novel,the film tells the story of a dying man who goes to Canada to claim his inheritance,but of course he's Dirk Bogarde and he isn't really dying at all but he does get to show his 3/4 profile a lot and look rather archly at the camera because this was before we discovered he could act and we were quite happy for him to put a cigarette in his elegant mouth and smoulder. Stanley Baker is,unsurprisingly,the bad guy,and he has thin lips and sneers at Dirk rather unpleasantly.He and several other members of the cast all make courageous but ill - advised attempts at the Canadian accent.I wish they hadn't - but there it is. I enjoyed this in 1958,smoking my "Gitanes"(pretentious - moi?) and blowing bubbles down the straw of my "Kia - Ora" in my innocent uncritical way,but after half a century of determined movie - going it now looks like little more than a travelogue plagued by some pretty appalling acting. Its always a pleasure to watch the young Mr Bogarde valiantly trying to express real emotion but falling short of the mark and he does it a lot here.But,bless him,he kept at it and eventually got it right a few years later in "Victim".But,as I ground the stub of my "Gitane" into the carpet and dropped my empty "Kia - Ora " under the seat,I just wanted him to punch Stanley Baker..

hogan-pj This film scores best in it's fine sense of location, which is to be applauded as the post war industry made the effort to escape from Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.Where it falls down is the residual ambiance, among the actors, that they are still in 'Titfield Thunderbolt' country.(OK. So that was filmed in Somerset). Nice in light comedy, Bogarde never really convinced in action roles and though Baker may have convinced some (Himself maybe) that he was tough, one feels that a Broderick Crawford or Richard Boone, possibly even James Mason, (if thinly sliced) would have eaten them both on toast, . Watch for the 'two shot' when Bogarde confronts Baker in the saloon and the bottle of 'Canada Club' whisky on the table jumps on and off its tray.