Action for Easter

Press, 31 March 1983, Page 10

Action for Easter

Two action movies of a different nature — one about a 3000 km auto race , through the wilds of Africa, starring David Carradine (pictured left); the other about a commando raid in London, featuring Lewis Collins (below left) — will be in Christchurch for the Easter holidays. “Safari 3000,” which starts at the Avon on Saturday, was made with an international crew under the most trying conditions encountered by a motion picture crew shooting in Africa since the making of “Trader Horn” in 1930. The film contains sequences in which the stars, Carradine, Stockard Channing and Christopher Lee, are surrounded by lions, elephants and other wild game. The animals are kept at bay by the Bristows, the leading experts on Africa’s wildlife. The film unit was the first to shoot in Zimbabwe since the fighting ended between rival armies and the country became an independent new African nation. Eighteen weeks were spent filming along the back roads of several other African countries in dangerous animal-infested jungles, rivers and mountains. "Who Dares Wins,” which starts at the Cinerama today, is based on the true story of a terrorist siege of the Iranian Embassy in London on the morning of April 30, 1980. Three terrorists entered the building on some pretext, then three more raced from a red car parked near the front door and machinegunned its glass panels as they bundled the police inside. By late afternoon, it became known that a group of disaffected Iranians were holding 21 countrymen and four Britons hostage and threatening to kill them if their obscure demands were not met. This called for the S.A.S. troop, led by Lewis Collins (of TV’s “The Professionals”) to be called in to save the day.