After reading several other reviews I was amazed to find out how many other folks had a profound effect from this film. This movie has been embedded with me for 49 years. I first saw this movie when I was 7 years old. I remembered how intrigued I was with the Sammy before, during and after I first saw this film. I vividly remember the movie poster and the black and white ad in the movie guide in the newspaper. I think that this movie's affect as a young boy was the bond I felt for the character and how as a young boy I could relate to his character. Somehow I felt empowered from all of it. In retrospect what this movie had done was to transform and transport me into this character and take me on a journey to a different time and place that was strange, exciting and different. If you ever saw me when I was 7 I looked and acted very like Sammy. I guess thats one reason why over the years why I've traveled some much and enjoy meeting and interacting with different people who we normally don't interact with. Also if you notice Syammy embraced being alone (sign of strength) and yet he was instinctive about certain people he could trust and care for and others he was very suspicious of their motivation. I was the perfect demographic for this movie. I definitely have a soft spot for this flick both then and now.They say a good movie is when you remember it a day later, but a great movie you'll always remember, well The Boy Ten Tall was one of those. There was something special about this movie that stayed with me so many years. Over the years I have viewed this movie twice and tonight I found this movie online and watched it with great excitement. I just can't believe that this wasn't mainstream more...it should be.

I saw this in the 60s and it captivated me. All the characters were realistic, it could have happened. I probably spend two decades trying to locate a copy; bid for one on E-bay for $80 and lost, then finally lucked out and got one for $35 a year later. It was worth the wait and is just as good as it was. According to a poster it was originally almost an hour longer and had different music, which I don't know anything about. Also the use of guns by a kid is probably looked on as politically incorrect, especially since he saves Eddie Robinson by shooting a leopard. Can't have that. Just another reason to re-release it.

the other day something somewhat amazing (at least for me) happened, i was checking out this usenet group that posts various obscure movies. and was reading the description of one of the posts and immediately knew it was a movie that i had seen many many years ago on when we had a b&w television so i would have been 9yrs old or younger. This movie had a almost overwhelmingly profound impact on me, it's the sort of thing that hardly a few days go by that i don't recall some scene, even 35 some years later, and it may sound a little corny, but i really think it had a formative effect on my life, basically it's an old British film about this 10yr old kid who's parents are killed during the 1956 conflict in the suez canal zone, and he is all alone in this chaotic country, decides to find some relative in Durban clear on the other end of the continent, so he treks out and gets into all these hair-raising situations but survives on his guile and wits, in particular i remember what saved him several times was his abandonment of any aristocratic bearing which endeared him to the myriad natives etc he became involved with, seeing it at that time deeply touched me somehow and the kid became a huge hero and role-model to me, probably more subconsciously than anything considering it has remained so vivid all these years. so it was a minor miracle in a way, to stumble upon it like that, i doubt you would ever see it on television, all these years i had never even known the name of it. I feel as if i have been re-united with a long lost friend, a friend who's name is "Sammy Going South"i never read any other review before writing my own… now after having read others, there is an almost eerie similarity, i find it extraordinary that this long lost film has had such a profound effect.

A ten year-old English boy's parents are killed in Port Said during the 1956 Suez crisis, and so, in the British way, he sets off--alone and on foot--to travel the length of Africa to find his only relative, an aunt in Durban, South Africa. A children's picture filled with delights, especially the lovely location cinematography; the inspired casting of Edward G. Robinson as a wily soldier of fortune; and the engaging Fergus McClelland as the boy, Sammy, whose own innocence somehow mirrors an Africa which, even in 1956 (or 1963), was already quickly passing away.