Cheap Kim (DVD) (Errol Flynn, Dean Stockwell) (Victor Saville) Price

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Customer Reviews of Kim

Kim - invaluable life lesson's...
Kim based on Rudyard Kipling's adventure book about the young British boy Kim who has lost both his parents and survives in India through theft, begging, and being a messenger. Kim avoids the British as he has heard that they send their boys to school, but when his identity is revealed he struggles against the system after he is sent to school. In addition, a holy man who has made a strong impression on Kim encourages him to stay in school in order to help him seek enlightenment. Simultaneously, there is a war brewing in northern India and Kim seems to play large part in the outcome of this possible bloodshed. Kim is an interesting film shot in India that teaches some valuable lessons in regards to education and belonging. Despite having some scenes that seem too staged and stiff, which causes some awkwardness in the story, the film leaves the audience with a good cinematic experience.

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Question answered
This was the only way I could figure out to answer Predone's question: The tune is "John Peel".

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A necessary telescoping of the novel, but...
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...nevertheless as good on DVD as I remember it on the big screen when I was a youngster. During the '50s and '60s, when it played on commercial television, the idiot box artists chopped this film without mercy or sense, squeezing out of it almost all the flavor, and it's great to see *Kim* - admittedly a bit murky on the visual side, a bit twiddled and diddled in the sound department - back in its theatrical version, and in a form that allows for easy replay and scene selection.

Despite the relatively minor role played by the "real" Mahbub Ali in Kipling's book, the script's structuring took advantage of Errol Flynn's mature screen presence (as an actor, he most certainly got better as he grew older) to good effect, and did the job without doing any real violence to Kipling's story. Dean Stockwell's work is only so-so compared with what he *could* produce under proper direction, and while Paul Lukas is as good in this role as you'd expect him to be, I still have more than a bit of trouble thinking of him as a Tibetan lama.

By the bye, could someone please tell us the name of the tune being played as the Mavericks ("a red bull on a green field") come marching into frame about midway through the movie? It's the same tune playing at the close of film, and I'm driving myself *nuts* trying to remember what the damned thing is called. Thanks.
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