Brian O'Shaughnessy Movies

John G. Avildsen, director of Rocky and The Karate Kid, adapts Bryce Courtenay's compassionate novel about the coming of age of a white anti-apartheid activist during the years of World War II in South Africa. Avildsen cumbersomely grafts Courtenay's tale of fighting apartheid onto a Hollywood-style fight-for-the-championship bout. Seven-year-old P.K. (Guy Witcher) is a white South African raised on his family's farm by his Zulu nanny. When his mother takes ill, he is sent away to an Afrikaner boarding school, where he is picked on and nearly killed by the school bully during a pep rally for Hitler. P.K. survives and is sent to live with his grandfather. He befriends Doc (Armin Mueller-Stahl), a jailed German musician, and a black inmate (Morgan Freeman), who teaches P.K. how to use his fists for some quick boxing moves. At 12, P.K. (now played by Simon Fenton), witnesses black inmates being cruelly humiliated by their racist white jailers. Taking note of P.K.'s fluidity for languages, his black mentor spreads the word that P.K. is the incarnation of the mythic Rain Maker, a messianic liberator who is destined to unite all the African tribes. By the time he's 18 years old, P.K. (now played by Stephen Dorff) is becoming the Great White Hope for the black Africans, boxing his way into their hearts and minds. He joins up with an old boxing foe (Alois Moyo), who is now a township activist, and takes up the apartheid struggle. But things get confusing when P.K. falls in love with the daughter (Fay Masterson) of an apartheid leader. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Also known as Time of the Beast, Mutator concerns a gene corporation that creates--and accidentally unleashes--an evil cat that proceeds to kill and eat as many victims as it can get its claws on. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel of the same title by Uwe Timm and set in 1904 in South Africa, this is an uneven tale of war and intrigue between native South Africans, German colonialists, and British colonialists, a war no one really wins. Gottschalk (Jacques Breuer) and Wenstrup (Edwin Noel) are two German veterinarians who have settled in German Southwest Africa to tend to the needs of cattle ranchers. When a rebellion by a local dissident named Morenga (Ken Gampu) is brutally crushed by the Germans, the two vets get involved, at great risk to themselves, and offer help to the native revolutionaries. What follows is a sequence of battles and skirmishes that ultimately lead to Morenga seeking asylum in South Africa, where the ruling Brits are about as trustworthy as their German counterparts. Morenga was nominated for a Golden Bear award at the 1985 Berlin Film Festival.
~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Kalahari bushman Xi (played by genuine bushman N!xau) is as surprised as the rest of his tibe when a Coke bottle, thrown from a passing plane, lands in the middle of their village. This "gift from the gods" proves to be a mixed blessing when the tribesmen fight over it and eventually use it for a weapon. To keep peace in the village, Xi is assigned to take the bottle to "the end of the earth" (actually a lush valley) and throw it back to the gods. Meanwhile, back in urbanized South Africa, Kate Thompson (Sandra Prinsloo) leaves her office job in the city to take a job teaching Kalahari children; once in the wilderness, she finds herself constantly bumping into clumsy microbiologist Andrew Steyn (Marius Weyers). And meanwhile, maniacal Sam Boga (Louw Verwey) is leading a military coup against the government. How do all these various and wildly divergent characters fit together? You'll have to see The Gods Must be Crazy yourself--if you haven't seen it already. This Botswanian comedy/melodrama was directed by Jamie Uys, who had helmed dozens of films before Gods and would make many more afterwards. Originally slated for limited domestic distribution in 1982, Gods Must Be Crazy was picked up for American consumption by 20th Century-Fox in 1984. Within a few weeks, "word of mouth" transformed Gods into the biggest foreign boxoffice hit ever released in the U.S. The 1989 sequel didn't do quite as well, indicating that perhaps the bloom was off the rose for N!xau and his confreres. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in 19th-century Africa, this film chronicles the horrors of the slave trade and the relationship between an Arab slave-trader and the people he sees as goods to be bought and sold. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

When the Italian and British armies are fighting in Africa at the beginning of World War II, a game warden and his wife have their hands full trying to defend the wildlife of Africa against the encroachments of the war. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide

George Montgomery directs and stars in in this location-filmed adventure (for reasons unknown, TV prints credit the direction to one "Douglas K. Stone"). Montgomery heads to South Africa when he inherits a Johannesburg estate. But the place is run down, and the overseers seem surly and secretive. Having been a detective in the States, Montgomery puts his deductive skills to work. He soon learns that his estate is a front for a drug-smuggling operation. In between spurts of violence, Satan's Harvest is a disarmingly pleasant travelogue of South Africa. Tippi Hedren, then a resident of the region depicted herein, costars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The quest for a fortune gold bullion provides the impetus for this adventuresome crime drama set in Southwestern Africa. It all begins with a plane crash. The pilot barely survives. When he awakens he sees that he is near an abandoned, wreck of a wagon. He ends up taken in by a couple who talk about the wagon and its mysterious cargo. Soon after the pilot's return to Johannesburg, he finds that the wagon is purported to have been filled with gold. Excited, he, and others, including his son and his son's girl friend, return to the location and begin their search. Unfortunately, the couple who rescued him lie in wait and take them all hostage. For the second time in the story, the wife attempts to seduce the pilot and was with the first time, the pilot says no. Realizing that she was wrong to have done that, the repentant wife frees the captives, an act that costs her life. Later, the searchers find the treasure, but unfortunately, things are not as they seem to be and violence ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa battle the British Army for control of the country. The Boers have a mysterious leader known only as "the rider," whose guerilla tactics are a thorn in the side of the Queen's elite forces. Financed by the prosperous white farmers of the region, the Boers set up a racially segregated society that later became known as apartheid. This lavishly costumed epic portrays the racial injustices that would continue for at least another 80 years. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide