| Trader Horn | |
| Director: | Reza Badiyi |
| Producer: | Lewis J. Rachmil |
| Starring: | Rod Taylor Anne Heywood Jean Sorel |
| Music: | Shelly Manne |
| Cinematography: | Ronald W. Browne |
| Editing: | George Folsey, Jr. |
| Runtime: | 101 minutes |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Gross: | $180,934 (US) |
Trader Horn is a 1973 Metrocolor film directed by Reza Badiyi and starring Rod Taylor as the African adventurer Alfred Aloysius Horn (1861–1931). It is a remake (or perhaps more accurately a reboot) of the 1931 film, also released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Neither picture is faithful to the original memoirs of Horn, who was 53 when World War I began.
During World War I, Alfred Aloysius "Trader" Horn leads an expedition in search of a platinum mine in an unexplored region of Africa. The trio encounter warring natives, rhinos and lions. They travel through jungle, swamps, and desert. They are pursued by German soldiers wanting the platinum for the war effort and by a British officer hunting Horn as a traitor.
The film was primarily shot on the backlot at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios in Culver City, California. The script, set during the First World War, ignores the plot of the largely fictitious 1931 film about the discovery of a white jungle queen. The new story is written to use colourised footage from the MGM films King Solomon's Mines (1950), and Mogambo (1953).[1] Rod Taylor felt, with the end of the Vietnam War, the time was right for old-fashioned hero movies to make a comeback.[2]
Rod Taylor performed his own stunt riding on a zebra in the picture, actually taming the animal in the process.[2]