Review of Rampage

Rampage (1963)
6/10
The Trapper And The Hunter
4 June 2011
Rampage casts Robert Mitchum and Jack Hawkins as a trapper of wild game and a hunter of same respectively. They've been hired by the Berlin Zoo to bag some big cats for exhibition. Both of them see themselves as Hemingway like existential characters, each with a distinct philosophy about the profession they've chosen for themselves. Both have world wide reputations for what they do.

Probably it would all have been fine had not Hawkins introduced Mitchum to Elsa Martinelli his mistress who has been such since she was found in a burned out church during World War II as an adolescent. Hawkins did introduce her to the facts of life, but Elsa's been taking care of business on her own for a while, but she always comes back to Hawkins. A fling with Mitchum though has Hawkins going through the Othello thing without an Iago to stoke those green fires.

The trio is looking for special game, it is reported that there is an enchantress in the Malay jungle, a mixed breed of a tiger and a leopard. When we see the enchantress it looks like it has the bone structure and shape of a tiger, but the spots of a leopard. The Malay natives regard them as special.

I saw Rampage in the theater when it first came out and the jungle scenes are great, but the soap opera plot among the leads is strictly melodramatic. Still I think fans of the leading characters will like it.
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