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Alex Davidson welcomes the release of this drama based on a true story and set among the debauched rich of the British colony in Kenya's Happy Valley in the 1940s. Greta Scacchi stars as the femme fatale.

The decadence and immorality of the British settlers in Colonial Africa was summed up in a scandal following the killing of a young earl, a notorious womanizer who had been sleeping with the wife of an elderly British rancher. The latter was tried for murder, and the debauched lifestyle of his compatriots was revealed - a world of obscene privilege, sleaze, adultery and hedonism, as the threat of war crept close back home. Michael Radford expertly captures this other world in White Mischief, which shows the background and aftermath of the murder case, and boasts a fantastic cast embodying the immoral Happy Valley set.

Greta Scacchi, a key British actress of the 1980s, plays the beautiful, unfaithful wife who yearns for excitement away from her much older husband, and Sarah Miles contributes a daring turn as a particular outrageous member of the clique. Best of all is Joss Ackland as the cuckolded husband, at once dignified in comparison to the other settlers, yet just as unthinkingly racist when dealing with the Kenyan populace. White Mischief is an appropriately damning indictment of the worst aspects of British Colonial rule.

 

Alex Davidson on 29th July 2010
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DVD quality is fine. Picture a little soft but that's how I remember it at the cinema.
Great film more >

DVD quality is fine. Picture a little soft but that's how I remember it at the cinema.
Great film < less

 

I pre-ordered this many months ago and was delighted to receive it a few days ago. sitting down to watch I have been absolutely astonished at the appallingly bad quali... more >

I pre-ordered this many months ago and was delighted to receive it a few days ago. sitting down to watch I have been absolutely astonished at the appallingly bad quality of the reproduction of the film. So bad is it that I cannot watch it and consider that it is not of merchantable quality. The Bonus interviews are fine, but the film should never have been issued as it is. It is a 1987 film and I have many films thirty or forty years earlier that are totally watchable. What the devil do Sony think they are up to. < less