East of Elephant Rock is a 1977 British independent drama film directed by Don Boyd and starring John Hurt, Jeremy Kemp and Judi Bowker.
[2][3] Like William Somerset Maugham's 1927 play The Letter and two subsequent film adaptations, its narrative content depended on the 1911 Ethel Proudlock murder scandal in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which became a cause célèbre scandalising British colonial society and which had been featured in a Sunday Observer article as recently as the year before.
Plantation owner Robert Proudfoot exploits his native workers, while his spoiled wife Eve becomes progressively distant from her husband.
The programme notes pointed out:All through the production there was a conscious stylistic discipline of creating a film to echo the moods and mannerisms of the heyday of big studios in the 1940s, and yet encompass a modern approach.
[10] Alexander Walker's view praised the film's often glorious mise en scène on a limited budget and especially valorises Jeremy Kemp's performance but agrees the story was ineptly handled.
[7] The Evening Standard stated Whatever Don Boyd can’t do, he can involve you in a real sense of people and space; the small-timers of backwoods administration living it up in feudal style, clustering ever more tightly together at the cocktail parties for security.