THE PLANTER’S WIFE is/was the 1952 British-made adventure that migrated to the States as the rather more action-promising OUTPOST IN MALAYA. At home it did well, placing #6 in U.K. cinemas. In the USA, despite the presence of American star Claudette Colbert (the wife) and subject timeliness (the ‘Malayan Emergency’) it fought a losing battle: Cogerson indicates this perished at 228th place;Variety claimed that the take was just $90,000. Bloody Commie cheek! *

The marriage of ‘Liz and Jim Frazer’ (Jack Hawkins) looks to be fraying, what with Jim paying more attention to overseeing their rubber tree plantation than to matrimonial contentment. Their discord coincides with increasing peril from ‘bandits’ (aka Communist pro-independence forces) wreaking havoc with imported British colonial/economic interests and lifestyles. Poised to evacuate to England with their little boy, Liz is trapped with Jim when the insurgents lay siege to their fortified home.

Pro-settler & Empire political positioning a given, it’s decently directed by Ken Annakin, and manages action and tension effectively. A bit of 2nd unit footage was copped in Malaya, but eight weeks worth was covered in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) as a safer substitute, with those now-nostalgic atmosphere captures of landscapes, towns and inhabitants blended in with the obvious soundstage work done back in England

Claudette does the requisite ‘ladylike’ thing after her self-defense shooting of a parang-wielding attacker: she faints. Later, during the actionful finish, she gets in touch with her inner tigress—Claudette Colbert with a machine gun! Lobbing grenades! Sturdy Hawkins warms up for the jungle fighting he’d soon engage in for The Seekers and eventually The Bridge On The River Kwai. There’s a plum child performance as their son from 8-year-old Peter Asher, later of the 60’s singing duo Peter & Gordon and then a successful music producer.

A proper job is whipped up from the sound effects lads and someone arranged for a creepy cobra vs. mongoose death match in a bungalow w.c.

Peter Proud (yep!) and Guy Elmes wrote the script, lifted from the novel by S.C. George. Photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth. The flavorful score is from Allan Gray (A Canterbury Tale, The African Queen). With Anthony Steel, Ram Gopal, Andy Ho, Jeremy Spencer, Victor Maddern and Bill Travers. 88 minutes.

* From “Anything for a Quiet Life”, Hawkins autobio: “It was full of action in the depths of the Malayan jungle, although I have to admit that we did not leave Pinewood Studios for one single day. All the outside work was done with that rather cheating technique of back projection, by which the action is played out against a screen showing moving pictures of locations (that were not even in Malaya, but in Ceylon). What made it all the more absurd was the fact that we were filming in the middle of winter, and dressed only in bush shirt and shorts I was permanently frozen.”

The Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) also figured in Windom’s Way (1957), The 7th Dawn (1964) and The Virgin Soldiers (1969).