Cy Endfield

A small aircraft crash lands in the Kalahari Desert. One of the passengers decides to search for help, while the remaining five, including one woman, take shelter in a mountain populated by a troop of baboons. A small airplane crashes in the sweltering deserts of southern Africa hundreds of miles from civilization. As parallels are drawn between the stranded group of seven passengers and a nearby pack of savage baboons, one of the men's survivalist nature gets the better of him, as he decides his chances of survival would be better if the other men were eliminated one-by-one.

In January 1879, a communiqué to the government in London, (narrated by Richard Burton), details the crushing defeat of a British force at the hands of the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana on January 22, 1879. At a mass Zulu marriage ceremony witnessed by Boer missionary Otto Witt (Jack Hawkins) and his daughter (Ulla Jacobsson), Zulu King Cetewayo (Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi) is also informed of the great victory earlier in the day. Witt and his daughter flee from the Zulu village to warn the British soldiers at their mission at Rorke's Drift about an impending Zulu attack. A company of the British Army's 24th Regiment of Foot, a Welsh regiment, is using the missionary station of Rorke's Drift in Natal as a supply depot and hospital for their invasion force across the border in Zululand. Upon receiving news of Isandhlwana from the Witts and that a large enemy force is advancing their way, Lieutenant John Chard (Stanley Baker) of the Royal Engineers assumes command of the small 135-man British detachment, being senior by virtue of his commission date to Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead (Michael Caine), who, as an infantry officer, is rather put out to find himself subordinate to an engineer. From a Boer frontier police officer, Chard and Bromhead are told of the Zulu's standard tactical doctrine, the simple but deadly effective Bull formation that enables a twinned pincer maneuver while a front force keeps the enemy occupied. Realising that they cannot outrun the Zulu army, especially with wounded soldiers and a counter-offensive against Zulu tactics would be suicide in any case, Chard decides to fortify the station and make a stand, using wagons, sacks of mealie, and crates of ship's biscuit. When Witt becomes drunk and starts demoralising the men with his dire predictions, causing the soldiers of the Natal Native Contingent to desert, Chard orders him and his daughter to leave. A group of Zulu warriors, on the hills around the fort, see them but recognizing them as missionaries, allow Witt and his daughter to pass by them. As the Zulu impis approach, a contingent of Boer horsemen arrives. They advise Chard that defending the station is hopeless before they flee, despite Chard's desperate pleas for them to stay. Minutes later, a low rumbling is heard which are thousands of Zulu warriors banging their spears against their cow-hide sheilds which according to Bromhead "it sounds like a train". The 4,000-strong Zulu impis appears on a ridge overlooking Rorke's Drift and advances to attack. After an inital assault, hundreds of Zulu riflemen open fire on the station from a neighbouring hill. Over the next few hours, wave after wave of Zulu attackers are repelled. The Zulus do succeed in setting fire to the hospital, leading to intense hand-to-hand fighting between British patients and Zulu warriors as the former try to escape the flames. Malingering Private Henry Hook (James Booth) surprises everyone by taking charge in the successful breakout. Attacks continue into the night. The next morning, at dawn, the Zulus approach to within several hundred yards and begin singing a war chant; the British respond by singing "Men of Harlech". In the last assault, just as it seems the Zulus will finally overwhelm the tired defenders, the British soldiers fall back to a tiny redoubt that Chard had earlier ordered constructed out of mealie bags. With a reserve of soldiers hidden within the redoubt, they form into three ranks, and pour volley after volley into the stunned natives, who withdraw after sustaining heavy casualties. Later, the Zulus sing a song to honour the bravery of the defenders and leave. The film ends with a narration by Richard Burton, listing the defenders who received the Victoria Cross, including Private Hook. Eleven were awarded for the actual fighting at Rorke's Drift.

During the Civil War a group of Union soldiers, a Confederate and a civilian escape the stockade using a hot-air balloon and end up on a strange Pacific island. During the US Civil War, Union POWs escape in a balloon and end up stranded on a South Pacific island, inhabited by giant plants and animals. They must use their ingenuity to survive the dangers, and to devise a way to return home. Sequel to '20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'. —Stewart M. Clamen <clamen@cs.cmu.edu> In 1865, during the siege of Richmond, Virginia, Union soldier POWs Captain Harding, Neb and Herbert escape in a balloon during a hurricane with a confederate prisoner, Sergeant Pencroft and civilian journalist, Spilett. The storm takes the balloon to a mysterious island near New Zealand in the South Pacific. Captain Harding proclaims himself leader of the group and they look for food. They discover that they are stranded on an island and soon are attacked by a giant crab that becomes their first meal. In the following days they build themselves shelter and find the island inhabited by other giant animals. One day they find two castaways on the beach: the aristocratic Lady Mary Fairchild and her sexy niece Elena. Later they find a trunk with weapons and a sextant and then they find the hut and journal of a man once marooned on the island by pirates. When pirates later return to the island, the castaways are surprised to be helped by Captain Nemo of the legendary submarine Nautilus. (Nemo -- notorious for his war against slavery -- was supposedly sunk and gone missing eight years earlier.) Finally, when a volcano threatens to obliterate their island, all must plan an escape. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil As the war between the States is coming to an end, an imprisoned Union captain, two other prisoners, a confederate soldier and a civilian newspaperman escape in a hot air balloon. Strong winds carry the across the country and out over the Pacific where they eventually land on what at first appears to be an uninhabited island. They are soon joined by two women, survivors of a pirate attack. While they manage to make a home for themselves, they have to deal with extraordinarily large animals including a giant crab and giant bees. The giant fauna is the result of experiments by Captain Nemo who has lived on the island aboard his crippled submarine, the Nautilus, for eight years. They also have to deal with an active volcano and time is short if they are to leave the island before it explodes. —garykmcd 1865. With the aid of Gideon Spilitt, a war correspondent for the New York Herald, three Union soldiers - Cyrus Harding, Herbert Brown, and Neb Nugent - are able to break out of a Libby, a military Confederate prison in Richmond, Virginia, the four men who are able to escape using one of the Confederate's surveillance hot air balloons, they in the process necessarily taking along a Confederate soldier, Pencroft, as he knows how to operate the balloon. Despite Pencroft's knowledge, the balloon nonetheless crash lands in where they believe is somewhere in the South Pacific on a seemingly deserted volcanic island. Still considering themselves at war, Captain Harding, as the senior officer, feels he should take charge. While Brown, a self-admitted coward, and Nugent, a black man, willingly go along with his orders as their superior, Spilitt and Pencroft are more reluctant in their agreement, working cooperatively for their own survival outweighing whatever hesitation they have working under Harding. The five are soon joined on the island by two Brits, Lady Mary Fairchild and her pretty young adult niece Elena, the only two survivors of a shipwreck. While there is a bounty of food and water on the island to survive, they still work toward the goal of trying to get off the island back to civilization. While they learn quickly in their stay that they share the island with a number of supersized menacing animals which provide much wanted animal protein, that is if the animals don't kill them first, they face a looming more dangerous menace preventing them from staying on the island much longer, something well known to the hidden eighth on the island. —Huggo