Guns at Batasi

Guns at Batasi (1964)

Outnumbered A Hundred to One - Yet Fighting Like a Thousand Heroes in a Hell Spot Called Batasi!

An anachronistic martinet RSM on a remote Colonial African army caught in a local coup d'etat must use his experience to defend those in his care.

Date of release
1964-10-30
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (33)
Runtime
1h 43m
Genres
Drama, War
Director
John Guillermin

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

Guns at Batasi is a 1964 British drama film starring Richard Attenborough, Jack Hawkins, Flora Robson, John Leyton and Mia Farrow. The film is based on the 1962 novel The Siege of Battersea by Robert Holles and was directed by John Guillermin. Although the action is set in an overseas colonial military outpost during the last days of the British Empire in East Africa, filming was done at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom.

Production

The novel The Siege at Battersea by Robert Holles was originally published in 1962. It was adapted as a screenplay by a son of a sergeant major and former boy soldier, later army sergeant Holles. An original adaptation was credited to Leo Marks, Marshall Pugh, and additional material by C. M. Pennington-Richards.

The film was originally to be made by Roy and John Boulting, who wanted to make a return to drama after a series of comedies. "We think the time is ripe for us to return to the serious subject", said Roy Boulting.

Roy Boulting said he intended to start filming in August 1963 at Shepperton Studios with four weeks location filming in West Africa. The budget of $1 million was to be provided by Bryanston Films and British Lion. However the film would eventually instead be made by John Guillermin and 20th Century Fox.

The film, which was shot in CinemaScope, was made entirely at Pinewood Studios between February and April 1964 although it was set in tropical Africa (it was made at the same time as Goldfinger). The exterior night scenes were filmed on a sound stage and the opening scenes were shot on Salisbury Plain. Cinematographer Douglas Slocombe was used for this film.

Britt Ekland was originally cast as Karen Eriksson but pulled out three weeks into production. The Swedish actress had just married Peter Sellers, who apparently was so paranoid about her having an affair with John Leyton, that he secretly asked his old acting friends, David Lodge and Graham Stark who were co-starring in the picture, to spy on his new wife.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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