Saturday Night Cinema: The Planter’s Wife (1952)

Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema feature is The Planter’s Wife also known as Outpost in Malaya starring starring Claudette Colbert, Jack Hawkins and Anthony Steel. It is set against the backdrop of the Malayan Emergency and focuses on a rubber planter and his neighbours who are fending off a campaign of sustained attacks by Communist insurgents while also struggling to save their marriage. Yummy.

This is how to deal with terrorists the old fashioned way. Gripping drama – Jack Hawkins always played tough no nonsense types, with plenty of British stiff upper lip -and a beautiful woman (Claudette Colbert) who knows what to do with a Bren Gun.

The battle to the death between a cobra and a mongoose is one of the highlights. Bosley Crowther said, ‘it’s the best nerve-tingler in the whole show.’

THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; ‘ Outpost in Malaya’ Is Presented at Loew’s State With Claudette Colbert and Jack Hawkins
By Bosley Crowther, NY Times, November 27, 1952

Trouble-ridden Malaya, where the rubber planters back in the woods are now compelled to defend themselves with barbed-wire, barricades and Bren guns against the native terrorists, is the scene of explosive melodrama and a supplementary husband-wife tiff in the British film, “Outpost in Malaya,” which came to Loew’s State yesterday. But with all its contemporary interest and some excellent background footage of the actual scene, this promising documentary-fiction soon works out into a standard action film.

This is certainly no fault of Jack Hawkins, the burly Britisher who does an excellent job as a harassed but dauntless rubber planter with a determined resolve to protect his home and trees. And it is not for want of trying on Producer John Stafford’s part; he has brought back some fine scenes of plantations, Malayan cities and roadside ambuscades from the troubled area out in the Far East to give his film authenticity. Malayan natives in several key roles and some genuine liverish-looking Britishers are also true.

But the screen play by Peter Proud and Guy Elmes is an uneven, ordinary tale of a husband and wife almost splitting because of the tension of the peril in which they live. And Claudette Colbert in the key role of the baffled and agonized wife is forced to perform with more emotion than the situation demands. A knock-down-and-drag-out battle with besiegers attacking the planter’s bungalow brings the whole picture to a climax that is sheer shoot-’em-up and little more.

One of those lovely little pictures of a battle to the death between a cobra and a mongoose is dropped into this one, and it’s the best nerve-tingler in the whole show.

The Cast
OUTPOST IN MALAYA, screen play and story by Peter Proud and Guy Elmes; directed by Ken Annakin; produced by John Stafford. A Pinnacle production presented by J. Arthur Rank and released here by United Artists. At Loew’s State.
Liz Frazer . . . . . Claudette Colbert
Jim Frazer . . . . . Jack Hawkins
Inspector Hugh Dobson . . . . . Anthony Steel
Nair . . . . . Ram Gopal
Mat . . . . . Jeremy Spenser
Jack Bushell . . . . . Tom Macauley
Eleanor Bushell . . . . . Helen Goss
Ah Moy . . . . . Sonya Hana
Wan Li . . . . . Andy Ho
Mike Frazer . . . . . Peter Asher