New Picture

Flame over India (Rank; 20th Century-Fox). The time is 1905, the place is India's wild northwest frontier, and the situation is jolly awkward. There in an isolated outpost sits a smallish British garrison, surrounded by hordes of Moslem tribesmen howling for the blood of a five-year-old Hindu rajah, the local British puppet. Any minute the walls may fall, and to make matters worse, Delhi cables a command: get the boy to Kalapur, and get him there fast. But 300 miles of rebel-infested territory lie between the fort and Kalapur, and in crossing it a rescue party would stand about as much chance as a moth in a monsoon--unless, of course, the party is accompanied by an ingenious scriptwriter (Robin Estridge) with a trunk full of assorted jaws of death, nicks of time, hair's breadths, fell swoops, stiff upper lips, white man's burdens and whys not to reason.

To command his madcap mission, Scriptwriter Estridge appoints an aging Kipling Stripling, Captain Scott (Kenneth More), and to follow him he assembles an improbable rout of colonial types: the pudgy little rajah (Govind Raja Ross), his noisy American governess (Lauren Bacall), the British governor's unflappable wife (Ursula Jeans) and dithering secretary (Wilfrid Hyde White), a nefarious newsman (Herbert Lorn), two stolid Sikhs attached to primordial machine guns, a charming person (I.S. Johar) who runs locomotives, and an unspeakable person (Eugene Deckers) who runs guns. They all pile into an ancient passenger car drawn by a wondrously dilapidated steam engine called "Victoria"--apparently because it was built in the year (1819) of Her Majesty's birth--and go barreling through the enemy barricades. The plot is as old as Noah but as lively as it ever was, and if the British keep on like this, they might well make easterns as popular as westerns.

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