New review: Curse Of Simba
Can you feel the love tonight? Possibly not for this somewhat ill-advised piece of hokum, which scores extremely high on the British horror film ism-ometer (that’s “ism-ometer”).
The good news is that it’s another outing for the perpetually entertaining presence of Bryant Haliday, hot on the heels of his other classics, Devil Doll and The Projected Man. The bad news is that this is the last one we can showcase (until I revisit Tower Of Evil).
The other bad news is that Curse Of Simba (or Curse Of The Voodoo, or apparently, even Voodoo Blood Death) is quite astonishing, and not in a good way.
Put it this way, even for 1965 the display of rampant imperialism and barely disguised racism (“these people are further away from civilisation than stone-age man”, blimey, calm down Dennis – it’s you who’s choosing to live there, and shoot all their sacred animals) seems remarkably out of date.
Still, hakuna matata, eh?
So let’s all get a drink from the Heath Tea Bungalow and take a good hard look at ourselves and our outdated attitudes, whilst Bryant Haliday single-handedly ruins the circle of life by shooting pretty much everything that gets in his way.
