Campbell's Kingdom

Campbell's Kingdom (1957)

Rugged Wildcatters...Fighting the Treacherous Might of the Canadian Rockies!

Given only six months to live, Englishman Bruce Campbell goes to Canada to claim "Campbell's Kingdom", the land he inherited from his grandfather. In order to clear his grandfather's name and prove there is oil on the land, Campbell must face up to a ruthless contractor and work against the clock to find oil before "Campbell's Kingdom" is flooded by a new power dam.

Date of release
1957-09-03
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (19)
Runtime
1h 42m
Genres
Adventure, Drama
Director
Ralph Thomas

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: Pinewood Studios

Campbell's Kingdom is a 1957 British adventure film directed by Ralph Thomas, based on the 1952 novel of the same name by Hammond Innes. The film stars Dirk Bogarde and Stanley Baker, with Michael Craig, Barbara Murray, James Robertson Justice and Sid James in support. The story is set in Alberta, Canada, and largely follows the principles of the Northwestern genre of film-making.

Production

Hammond Innes's novel was published in 1952 and was based on the Canadian oil boom of the late 1940s. Innes researched the novel extensively and it was a best seller.

The story was serialised as Nothing to Lose. Film rights were purchased prior to the novel's publication by the producing-directing team of Betty Box and Ralph Thomas, who had just made The Venetian Bird (1952) for the Rank Organisation. Location scouting for the film began in August 1952, with Box and Thomas touring the Canadian Rockies. It was part of conscious decision from Rank to film more abroad.

"That serial title refers to the hero's special armour", said Ralph Thomas in September 1952. "He's a young Canadian whose friends help him strike oil on a piece of land willed by his grandfather to disprove the general belief that the old man was unhinged. And he happens to be fatally stricken. He's a dying man."

"There's quite a bit of room for suspense", said Betty Box. "For one thing a big oil company is obstructing him. Our climax will have the gusher flooded by a break in a huge dam. With an ingenious twist."

Eric Ambler was assigned to write the script. In 1954 Jack Hawkins and Shelley Winters were mentioned as possible stars.

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

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