Dark Rapture

Expeditions to parts of North and South America, India and Burma (Myanmar). Record of a journey to illustrate the life of countries in which allied servicemen are stationed.

A documentary film about adventures in the jungle featuring Frank Buck, a well-known American hunter, animal collector, writer, and actor in the 1930s. Buck demonstrates his ingenious methods for catching wild birds, mammals, and reptiles. Many scenes were shot on the vast Malay estates of Buck's friend, Sultan Ibrahim of Johor, who appears in the film himself.

The film tells of the Armand Denis/Lewis Cotlow expedition that had the two men cover 22,000 miles through Tanganyika, Belgian Congo, and British East Africa. The high points of their ten-month trip are an impressive elephant hunt by the Pygmies of Belgian Congo, the crowning of King Mbofe Mabiashe and the capture of a rhino.

The story of two young men, one a prince of royal Bali-blood and the other defined as a coolie, and they are both in love with Dasnee, a slave girl possessing the sensuous charms for which the women of Bali are known to have.

The photographic record of an African expedition led by producer-explorer Armand Denis and his (very) photogenic and camera-toting wife Michaela, who goes bird-riding at an ostrich farm. The expedition ranges from the central interior jungles and mountains to both coasts and as far south as Capetown, and ends with a gorilla hunt led by natives using 100-year-old muskets.

This documentary was made by the American Dodge Company in 1948-49 in order to promote the toughness of their trucks to North American, South American and Australian viewers. We see here rare scenes of Cuzco, Sacsayhuaman and other megalithic areas of Peru, Bolivia and other parts of South America. It is a great adventure into the mountains, jungles and deserts of South America! The film then moves on to Australia and the great wilderness of that country, still being explored in 1949!