OCTAGON

Evening Star, Issue 23124, 25 November 1938, Page 13

OCTAGON

‘ Elephant Boy ’ Sabu, the darkly attractive young man. whose adventures in the land where the elephants dance established him as a, new kind of screen star, is back again in ‘ The Drum,’ the film version of a novel by A. E. W. Mason, which is in an extended season at the Octagon. This time Sabu has the role of an Indian princeling who lives on the North-west Frontier and who is converted to friendship with the English after observing their behaviour under fire. It has 'comic soldier scenes and moments of intensity in which the whang of bullets in mountainous valleys hits the ear like a hammer. It has the natural, unaffected British hero, and a Governor who is extraordinarily theatrical and stilted. It has colour and drabness (it is filmed in teohnicolour), and its scenes played(in' a low key with the accepted English reserve are oddly effective when set against the impending doom which awaits the troops in the palace. In short, it is film which has something of everything, and which holds at its close as glorious a piece of screen fighting as anyone could want to see. Another youthful star in the film is Desmond Tester, who takes the role of Bill Holder, drummer-boy in the Gordon Highlanders. Prince Azim (Sabu) finds in the drummer-boy a companion after his own heart. They get lots of fun out of plaguing' the sergeant-major (Edward Lexy), and stick loyally together through the perils of a-revolt of the border tribes. \Vhen the revolt breaks out it is their comradeship that saves the British force from massacre, for the drum signal which the boys have arranged between them serves to warn the commanding officers of the conspiracy. As one expects in a story by A. E. W. Mason, there is plenty of action.