Maya (1966)

Director:

John Berry

Writers:

Jalal Din (novel)
John Fante (writer)

Release Date:

26 May 1966 (West Germany)

Genre:

Adventure

Tagline:

Action that tears the screen apart!

Plot:

An American boy runs away in the Indian jungle after a fight with his father. |

Plot Keywords:

Jungle | India | White Elephant | Boy Nudity | Tiger

Cast

Clint Walker	...	Hugh Bowen
Jay North	...	Terry Bowen
I.S. Johar	...	One-Eye
Sajid Khan	...	Raji
P. Jairaj	...	Gammu Ghat (as Jairaj)
Sonia Sahni	...	Sheela
Ulhas	...	Village Spokesman
Nana Palsikar	...	Raji's Father
Uma Rao	...	One Eye's Daughter
Madhusdan Pathak	...	Station Master

Also Known As:

Maya the Magnificent (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

91 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Italian

Color:

Color (Metrocolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Norway:12 | West Germany:6 (f) | Finland:K-12 | Sweden:11

Filming Locations:

India

Company:

King Brothers Productions

Movie Connections:

Followed by "Maya" (1967)

Two Boys, Two Elephants And India

The best thing about Maya is the exotic location cinematography in India, the film really serves as a great advertisement for tourism to that land. The story here though is kind of weak and at times makes little sense.

Clint Walker is the lead though most of the film concentrates on his son Jay North and Sajid Khan who is trying to get a mother elephant named Maya and her white baby elephant to some pilgrimage location. Sajid Khan was accompanying his dad on that location, the what and why of the pilgrimage is a mystery, but the father dies and Sajid has to carry on.

In the meantime young North has arrived in India where his dad who is a famed animal trapper is suffering a crisis of confidence after a nasty bout with a cheetah. Walker has no time for the kid, he's got a pretty young mistress in the house in the person of Sonia Sahni. She looks as exotic as Jean Simmons did in Black Narcissus.

Jay quarrels with Walker and leaves to go back home and then for no discernible reason jumps the train and takes off into the jungle where he meets up with Sajid and the elephants. The boys have to be real careful as the white elephant unlike in our culture is considered a symbol of good luck. Everybody wants that elephant.

North and Khan have a nice Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn kind of relationship in Maya which carries the film along with the beautiful photography. What is hard to grasp is that North is identified as having grown up in Wyoming. Now granted Wyoming isn't India, but it's pretty woodsy out there with a lot of wild animals. You'd think a kid growing up there would display more sense than Jay does.

The film was a minor success and spawned a short lived television series which became a gay classic. Walker's character was eliminated in that one and the film was about Jay and Sajid searching for North's missing dad with the elephant Maya. When they aged those couple of years as teenagers the relationship was so different. Same kind of dialog and situations, but it came out as gay.

The film is not bad and the story is timeless and a good family film if you can get past some glaring plot weaknesses.