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Amin: The Rise and Fall (1981)

DVD courtesy of 'Truegore.com'

Dir Sharad Patel

1971. The ruthless Idi Amin (Joseph Olita) stages a military takeover of Uganda usurping his old boss Milton Obote.
Once in power Amin goes about arresting and torturing any remaining rebels and anyone who criticises him and his regime is routinely murdered.

Amin expels all Asians from Uganda ("Uganda is for Ugandans. There will be no more Shahs and Patels”), switches allegiances between, and ultimately destroys all diplomatic links with, America, Canada and Great Britain (who he earlier served as a Sgt. In ‘The King’s African Rifles’), flirts with the Soviet Union and declares himself the Greatest African…"I'm Big Daddy".

As his brutal rule continues Amin becomes even more psychopathic, embraces Islam and turns churches into Mosques, but still practices voodoo while seducing (or raping) any woman who he takes a fancy to. He is also said to indulge in a spot of cannibalism.

Before his fall in 1979 (he fled to Saudi Arabia where he died in 2003) Amin’s regime will be responsible for the deaths of roughly 150,000 people.
This is that story…..

Welcome to the world of ‘worthy‘ Exploitation.
Made 3 years (and thus sadly missing the prime Exploitation decade of the 70‘s) after Amin‘s flight into Middle Eastern exile, “Amin: The Rise and Fall“ benefits from not only having it‘s real life subject matter still fresh in the minds of the general worldwide public but also for being able to tap into the stories of those directly involved.
As such there is a very authentic feel to the film and although much of Amin‘s more extreme aspects (like the cannibalism) are often disputed, many of the general facts and occurrences seen here are true and are handled seriously.

Away from the general events that mix fact, legend and fiction, the movie also covers a few more prominent real-life events and people.
The famous 1976 ‘Entebbe’ hostage situation is covered in slam bang style (a plane carrying 100 Israeli’s was hijacked by ‘The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine’ and flown into Uganda, reportedly with Amin’s blessing, before Israeli commandos carried out a daring rescue) and we also have a nice cameo by English writer Denis Hills who plays himself.

Hills was bitterly critical of Amin’s murderous rule and was swiftly arrested and sentenced to death. Only a plea from Queen Elizabeth herself (as well as two, literally, grovelling British diplomats) saved Hills from the firing squad!
Denis Hills is obviously relishing his chance to cinematically lay into Amin.

But of course this was aimed at the dying Grindhouse circuit not ‘The History Channel’ and so director Sharad Patel ensures that his film delivers just enough blood, sensation, camp, and cruelty to keep his audience (mostly) entertained.
The only real bloodshed comes in the form of numerous messy bullet hits as various undesirables are executed but there are minor moments of gore in the form of some heads in a fridge (a scene that is wonderfully set-up and has since become a cult movie favourite..."I talk to them") and the corpse of one of Amin’s supposedly unfaithful wives with her arms sawn off. A scene of delightful nastiness because Amin brings his many children in to see it, “You see what happens to bad mummies”!
There are also various beatings (one blow to the head looks painfully real as well), rather effective night-time sequences of disembodied screaming, various dead bodies and corpse pits, as the movie reveals Amin’s atrocities with a mixture of overblown camp and the grimly serious.

The film (which was shot in Kenya) also benefits from pretty big production values and as such we have plenty of extras as Amin parades through his people as well as lots of soldiers to round up undesirables and even a rather impressive battle sequence at the end (complete with armoured cars) as Uganda’s forces take on Tanzania’s avenging army and where we have some well done explosions and lots of flying stuntmen.

Performances are barely adequate from anyone sadly, but they all add to the trashy feel of the film.
Olita was obviously cast because of his similarity to Amin and not for his thespian skills. But he makes a striking enough figure going from pompous statesman to laughable despot (smirk as he hides in a bedroom cupboard as the noise from the Entebbe raid interrupts his sex session, with both a white and black girl) and although his acting can never be called anything like good, to be fair much of Olita’s performance may be hampered because of his struggle with the English language.
But he does deliver some of the high trash dialogue (most everything Amin says in fact…“I lost my temper! I killed the Archbishop”!) with aplomb.

Trouble with the English language though can’t be used to excuse the truly dire performance by Leonard Trolley as Bob Astles, Amin’s white, crazy haired, political advisor.
The best performances come from a slumming veteran Geoffrey Keen (“Doctor Zhivago” and the Defence Minister in various “James Bond” films) as the British Ambassador and Thomas Baptiste (“The Wild Geese“, “Dr. Terror's House of Horrors“) as the hard pressed Dr. Michael Oloya, who discovers Amin’s stash of frozen heads…“Doctor! For an African you’re looking very white”!
The strangest aspect of the casting though is that no less than two “Fawlty Towers” actors make unlikely appearances!
André Maranne (French Restaurant owner Andre in the episode “Gourmet Night”) as the French Ambassador and Louis Mahoney (a black Doctor in “The Germans” episode) as an anti-Amin rebel!

So what do we have? Well we certainly have a film that feels longer than it is thanks to the lethargic direction, a film with generally weak performances and one that is perhaps a bit too serious to be a real Grindhouse movie success and too camp and exploitative to be a worthy historical document.
But despite this there are still many individual moments to enjoy here, some macabre sights to see, some fun dialogue to relish and a good budget well used to effectively portray the large scale events.
What Idi Amin would have thought of it (perhaps he actually saw it while relaxing in his Saudi Arabian splendour) is hard to say. But it would probably be a mixture of rage, denial, self-gratifying amusement and egotistical approval.