I was not expecting much other than dumb stereotypes from a 1989 movie about white people in Africa that barely played in theaters, but Damned River took me by surprise. It's a tense and effective action-thriller-horror hybrid that's well paced and visually impressive, and it recognizes without any preaching or speechifying that white people who claim ownership of nonwhite people's land are not just morally bankrupt but also really annoying.
Set in the portion of the Zambezi River flowing through Zimbabwe, the movie opens with a young boy (Moses Ncube) playing in the mountainous terrain near the river. He spots a dead body floating past him that was pitched out of some falls. He runs to get help and several people living in the nearby village fish the body out while exchanging knowing and concerned glances.
This opening scene with its spectacular scenery, beautifully framed shots, crisp images, and skillful establishing of setting and community lets you know right away you're not about to see some straight-to-video trash (though I'm also a big fan of straight-to-video trash). You're in the hands of people who know what they're doing.
After this intriguing opening scene, four twentysomething Americans arrive for a Zambezi rafting trip. Though all four are movie types, they're distinctive from each other and mostly likable, and the actors playing them give natural performances. The group consists of three experienced whitewater rafters, lawyer Carl (Chopping Mall's John Terlesky), Carl's girlfriend, aspiring photojournalist Anne (Dragnet and Remote Control's Lisa Aliff) (she was also Miss Virginia in 1983), and novelist Luke (Christine and Night of the Comet's Marc Poppel), and rafting novice and party animal Jerry (Bachelor Party's Bradford Bancroft). Carl is your basic athletic milquetoast nicest-guy-in-the-frat type, Anne does double duty as the smart, detail-oriented type and the bringer of sex appeal, Luke is the sensitive artist constantly quoting Lord Byron, and Jerry is the wisecracking comic relief who would probably not be hanging out with this gang of overachievers if the movie did not require at least one joke about partying every three minutes. It's the law of the '80s.
Our intrepid rafting heroes take in some sights with local Mavuso (Leslie Mongezi), who will be assisting their river guide on the trip. He quickly wins Luke over after recognizing one of his Lord Byron quotes. The dude loves Byron and wants everyone to know it. The next morning, everyone, including the hungover Jerry (too many kamikazes) meets the river guide in the hotel lobby. He's a longhaired American ex-pat rugged pretty boy from Idaho named Ray (The Stepfather's Stephen Shellen), and he's all business, which already clashes a bit with Jerry's all-party attitude.
While in the lobby, Ray has a murkily explained altercation with an Afrikaner named Von Hoenigen (Louis van Niekerk) and some Zimbabweans who work for him, and he has a second murkily explained altercation with Von Hoenigen right before the group embarks on the rafting trip. This second altercation causes Mavuso to quit abruptly, leaving our gang alone with the very intense Ray. I have my theory about what is happening between Ray and Von Hoenigen, but the movie never explains in any satisfying detail what is going on between the men. I'll refrain from blabbing about my take in case you decide to watch this one.
Ray is a humorless and hard-to-read dude, but he seems like a skilled river guide at the beginning of the trip. As the days go by, however, Ray becomes increasingly more unhinged until he finally takes up permanent residence in Psycho Town, and our rafting gang's lives become deeply endangered. "I was the first one on this river!" Ray frequently exclaims, which is such a white guy thing to say about an African river.
The first few days of the trip before Ray goes completely bonkers are Jerry's time to shine. I'll give you just a sampling of his party animal wisdom. When Ray instructs them on handling the rapids, he tells them to do something or other or they'll be in serious trouble. Jerry responds, "I don't know anything about serious trouble. I only know about serious partying." When reminded of the length of the trip, Jerry says, "I can't believe I agreed to go seven days without MTV." When Luke drops his first Lord Byron quote, Jerry laughs it up and says, "What the hell are you talking about?" After Luke tells him he was quoting Byron, Jerry says, "Who's he? A rock star?" During Luke's 15th (or maybe just fourth) Byron quotation session, Jerry yells, "Nerd police! You're busted!" and dumps a bucket of water on Luke's head. Jerry has a good time, and we have a good time with him. I miss characters like Jerry, even though they are walking screenwriters' conceits.
Damned River ratchets up the tension little by little until there's nothing but tension, which turns into nonstop action in the final third. The whole thing is pretty enjoyable, with the major exception of an unpleasant rape scene that's a too frequent part of these kinds of movies. The filmmakers also prioritize the effect of the rape on Carl instead of Anne, which is pretty bogus but unsurprising considering the kind of world we inhabit. There were so many other ways to show Ray's creepiness.
That criticism aside, Damned River is a solid movie that blends a lot of satisfying movie clichés with its own distinctive weirdness and puts it all in a visually compelling landscape full of mountains, rivers, raging rapids, waterfalls, crocodiles, and hippos. I'm not going to make a case for the movie being some lost masterpiece of cinema, but, as Larry David might say, it's pretty, pretty, pretty good, though I have a hard time picturing Larry David watching this.
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