I remember seeing Watusi when it first came out in theaters back when I was 12 years old. Of course at the time I had not seen King Solomon's Mines and could not appreciate the fact that MGM was recycling a lot of the stock footage that they had shot in that film a decade earlier. Now some sharp eyed viewers might recognize Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, and Richard Carlson in long shots.
H. Rider Haggard when he wrote King Solomon's Mines created a Victorian era pulp fiction hero in African safari man Allan Quartermain. It's now 1919 and after war service Quartermain's son Harry played here by George Montgomery is after that elusive treasure that his father left behind, those legendary diamonds from the mines of King Solomon.
Joining him in this venture is David Farrar an old friend of his father and later on they rescue Taina Elg who is a missionary's daughter from some nasty natives. Montgomery has some mixed emotions about her as the World War I years left him with a nasty hatred of Germans.
I think you can see at least partially where this is going and I won't divulge the rest which was a surprise. Put it this way I think the choices Montgomery makes at the end of the film are ridiculous and really renders the film unrealistic to say the least.
Montgomery looks at home in the African jungle as he does in the American west and Elg and Farrar give good performances. Still Watusi is both recycled and faintly ridiculous.
