Zulu Dawn

“The sun dawned bloodied... two great armies met face to face... and the earth trembled to the sound of the Zulu death chant!”

Lord Chelmsford (Peter O'Toole) leads a British column into Zululand in 1879, sure that a native army will break against his rifles, with Sir Henry Bartle Frere (John Mills) pressing the colony toward war. Burt Lancaster plays Colonel Durnford, a veteran who rides in with his own doubts. Douglas Hickox, working from a Cy Endfield script and serving as a prequel to *Zulu*, films the march and the red-coated ranks in dusty, crowded wide shots.