Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Warner Home Video
• VHS Release Date: May 12, 1993
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301449177
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,011 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Adventure Movie ever made, August 25, 2001

By 

Alan Dean Foster (prescott, az) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gunga Din [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Though some of it is unavoidably dated and a few scenes run too long (spiking Higgenbotham's drink, Annie the elephant's illness), this film is still the archetype of its genre. Everything else works, from the stirring score to the authenticity of the costumes and the precise period military maneuvers, to the writing and the casting. Gary Grant, Victor McLaughlin, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. are three drinking and fighting buddies, sargeants in the British Army in 18th-century India. Sam Jaffe is the lowly Indian water-bearer who wants nothing more than to be a soldier. Together they have assorted marvelous and daring adventures while battling the resurgent murder cult of Thuggee (a real cult from which the English word "thug" arises). Many years later the Thuggs will put in a return appearance in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom". All the principals do sterling work. The Cockney Grant (ne Archie Leach) gets to play a cockney soldier, with obvious gusto. Stealing the show for me is the wonderful Eduardo Giannelli as the Guru, or leader, of the Thuggs. Think Hannibal Lecter with a bunch of devoted followers. This is also the only film from its era that I can think of where the bad guy is obviously smarter and better educated than the good guys. To see and hear a dark-skinned Hindu villain, in an age when racism was still all-too prevalent in popular culture and India still a part of the British Empire, announce that "India is my country, and I can die for my country as readily as you for yours", is remarkable. No less so is the Guru's speech to the sargeants on what makes a "great general". At a guess, I'd give history buff, cynic, and screenwriter Ben Hecht credit for the guru's memorable lines. There's a cavalry charge in the grand final battle by "Bengal Lancers" that beats anything John Ford ever shot. Look for the old Indian officer leading the charge while whirling his sword over his head. No equestrian school teaches you how to ride a horse like that. The film was largely shot on location outside the small town of Lone Pine, California, near Mt. Whitney. I eagerly await the DVD that will include, presumably, George Steven's Jr.'s excellent documentary on his father, within which is contained 16mm home color shots of some of the enormously complex concluding battle scene.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lively, Sometimes Stirring Entertainment, September 3, 2003

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gunga Din [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Among Steven Spielberg's many great talents is that of a storyteller and so I must assume that this is among his favorite action films. So many of its elements (e.g. sarcasm in the face of death) are developed more extensively in the Indiana Jones trilogy. Three brawling sergeants are stationed together in colonial India at a time when Thuggee terrorists ("thugs") threaten to overthrow British rule. One sergeant soon plans to retire and reluctantly agrees to accompany the other two on one last mission to locate the troublemakers. They do so, barely escaping with their lives. The Thuggees are led by an exceptionally intelligent and erudite holy man (Edwardo Ciannelli) who is determined to destroy one empire, replacing it with one of his own. Sergeants MacChesney (Victor McLaglen), Cutter (Cary Grant), and Ballantine (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) are eventually captured and find themselves powerless to warn the approaching British troops of a brilliantly formulated ambush. And then....

It would be a disservice to those who have not as yet seen Gunga Din to say more about its plot. Suffice to say that, under George Stevens' direction, this is a great action film. Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur developed the story, using only the name of the subject of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. (William Faulkner was also among those who collaborated on the screenplay.) Played by Sam Jaffe, Gunga Din is introduced as a water boy (whom the sergeants befriend) but eventually displays exceptional heroism. After seeing the film again recently, I now think Grant's performance offers the best impersonation of him I have as yet observed. Also, unlike Grant who later developed his talents as an actor, McLaglen is essentially the same character as he is in subsequent films such as Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, Rio Grande, and The Quiet Man. (He indicated so much promise as Gypo Nolan in The Informer four years earlier. What happened?) What we have here is a mini-spectacle in some respects, a "buddy film" in others, and at least an implicit affirmation of the need for colonial rule over "savages." But if I were to select one word to describe Gunga Din, it would be "romp." As such, if offers great entertainment.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating adventure yarn from Hollywood's Golden Age, August 26, 2002

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Gunga Din [VHS] (VHS Tape)

The great thing about this movie is that it can be enjoyed on several levels. One can view it as an exciting adventure yarn, for instance. The amazing thing is that there is a story to tell at all. Anyone who has read Kipling's famous poem knows that it tells no real story at all, and the decision to ask hardnailed writers Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur to write an exotic colonial adventure story was an odd one. The two, however, succeeded, and the film is enlivened not only by a fun story, but the camaraderie between the three main characters, played by Grant, McLaglin, and the junior Fairbanks. Visually, the movie is always at least interesting, even though to any trained eye the scenery is pretty obviously in the mountains of California and not India. The film is also an interesting variant on films about colonialism, and while it was not in any sense an innovator in that regard, nonetheless tends to repeat most of the biases and stereotypes. The context is somewhat interesting, in that the Indian movement for independence, led by Gandhi, was reaching a crescendo at the moment, only to be delayed by WW II. It is interesting that what is essentially a film about a group attempting the independence of India, albeit in violent fashion, should receive so little sympathy, indicating how very, very out of touch Hollywood at the time was with international affairs.

The heart of the film is the cast, however. This was Cary Grant's first attempt at an adventure film after having emerged as perhaps the premier comic actor in Hollywood in the previous few years in films like THE AWFUL TRUTH, HOLIDAY, and the Topper films (BRINGING UP BABY, on the other hand, despite being a classic today, was considered a career killer at the time, actually causing Howard Hawks, the original director of GUNGA DIN, to be replaced by George Stevens, because BABY lost so much money, and causing Katherine Hepburn to leave Hollywood temporarily for the Broadway stage to revive her career, which she did by appearing in THE PHILADELPHIA STORY, which would reunite her with Cary Grant). Victor McLaglin, a former soldier, excels as Sgt. MacChesney, in a role that pretty much signaled the end of his career as a leading man and his transition to that of character actor. Douglas Fairbanks Jr., while he never achieved the success or fame of his father, was likable in a number of film roles, this one chief among them. And while Joan Fontaine does not have an especially prominent role in this film, it is interesting to see her just a year before becoming a star in REBECCA. Italian actor Eduardo Ciannelli was properly sinister (as he often was in film roles) as the high priest of Kali. But the film, to be successful, had to have a first rate performer in the title role, and in that Sam Jaffe succeeded magnificently. Hollywood never knew what to do with Sam Jaffe. Over the course of his career, he actually appeared in a surprisingly few number of films, most memorably in THE SCARLETT EMPRESS, LOST HORIZON (as the High Lama), and, in perhaps his finest role, THE ASPHALT JUNGLE. But his unusual features, which suited him admirably for certain roles, made him ineligible for many others. He was, a bit like comedian Bert Lahr, a major talent, but one not precisely suited for the kinds of films that Hollywood liked to turn out.

Trivia: Ben Hecht first became noted for writing what are essentially human-interest columns in the Chicago Tribune. His frequent writing partner and fellow Chicagoan Charles MacArthur was the husband of stage great Helen Hayes, adoptive father of actor James MacArthur (HAWAII FIVE-O) and brother of insurance and real estate mogul and, upon his death, philanthropist John T. MacArthur. Cary Grant plays Archibald Carter; Archibald was his actual first name (Archibald Leach). In 1940 Grant would play in a comedy updating of Hecht and MacArthur's classic THE FRONT PAGE, retitled HIS GIRL FRIDAY. Grant employs a small time hood on that one played by Abner Biberman, who plays the son of the high priest of Kali in GUNGA DIN. Two years after GUNGA DIN, Grant and Joan Fontaine would star in SUSPICION, which would net her an Oscar for Best Actress.