Campbell's Kingdom Reviews

Modern british western. Bogarde is ok as hero marked to die, but the happy end betrays him. Baker is always a good heavy.

Campbell's Kingdom is the kind of healthily budgeted outdoor drama that the Rank Organisation increasingly turned to in the 50s to compete with the Hollywood studios. Dirk Bogarde is the now unfortunately named Bruce Campbell, a terminally ill Englishman with six months to live and some land in Canada he's just inherited from his disgraced grandfather, who the locals blame for ruining the town when their investment in his dreams of an oil strike ended with his partner running off with their money. Eager to prove the old man right before his own time is up, Bogarde's already tight deadline is further threatened by Stanley Baker's plan to flood the valley when he completes the dam he's building with dodgy cement and using to virtually run the territory himself. On Bogarde's side are surveyor Michael Craig, hotel manager Barbara Murray and James Robertson Justice's drilling engineer, but Baker controls the cable car that's the only way up to the `Kingdom' and will pull any dirty trick he can think of to stop them...

Based on a Hammond Innes bestseller and from the producer and director of Bogarde's hugely successful Doctor films, Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, it's the kind of well-made but unchallenging studio picture that seems rather cosy these days, and probably did back in 1957 too, but that's part of its charm. It's pretty clichéd stuff, but enjoyable enough for all that as a star vehicle even if a fiercely competitive Baker is clearly going all out to steal the picture from its more reserved star and his large collection of lumberjack shirts. The Eastmancolor location photography of the striking Canadian locations (actually the Dolomites in Italy) is pretty impressive and there's a supporting cast filled with familiar faces from British films of the era like Sid James, John Laurie, Finlay Currie, George Murcell and Robert Brown. It's the kind of film that won't do much for younger viewers but still has more than enough nostalgic appeal for older ones to carry it over as a satisfyingly undemanding Saturday matinee.

Network's PAL UK DVD offers a decent but unexceptional transfer with the original trailer and three stills galleries as extras, but VCI's US Region A-locked Blu-ray clearly uses a more recent transfer that's gone through some extensive visible restoration, which is a bit of a mixed blessing. The definition and vivid colour are much improved - the reds on Stanley Baker's shorts are particularly vibrant - but while for the most part the DNR has been used with some restraint it does become noticeably problematic in one of the big setpieces an hour into the picture when it starts to cause some motion blur. It's never quite bad enough to be a disaster but, like a few slight judders in the picture here and there, it lets down an otherwise very impressive release. The British trailer is the disc's only extra, and just to add to the inconvenience there's a lengthy promo for VCI's other vintage British releases (curiously the only part of the disc that is region-free) that you can't skip or fast forward though.