Dennis Wheatley writing to autograph collector and hotelier Eileen Cond about the 1934 film of ‘The Forbidden Territory’:

30th August 1934:

“The Forbidden Territory” film is all finished and to start in London in October, I believe. They have, of course, altered it very considerably, but although I have not seen it yet, from all I hear, it will make an excellent film. The snow scenes which were done on the Latvian – Russian border are said to be very lovely, and they have a first class cast.

3rd December 1934:

Very many thanks for your letter. I don’t wonder that your father was disappointed with the film of “The Forbidden Territory”. As you know I had nothing to do with making it, and the principal concern of the people who did appears to have been avoiding any situation which would give offence to Russia.

You see, the trial of the British engineers in Moscow came shortly after the book appeared and if it had been filmed then they would have done anything they liked, now however, Russia has been accepted into the League of Nations, and on that account there were grave doubts as to if the film would be passed by the censors for exhibition at all.

The great fault of the film to my mind is that they based the story on 11,000 feet, which they made, knowing all the time like the fools they are, that they could only show 7,000, because exhibitors will only show a film for 75 minutes. Otherwise they cannot get through the rest of their program.

In consequence, they had to cut out whole chunks of it afterwards. The first three reels are not too bad but so much of the last two has been eliminated that it simply does not hang together. The end of the story now is something like trying to follow a book out of which every third chapter has been torn.

Unfortunately film people are like that. I am by no means the only author who suffers in this way and once they have bought a book there is nothing which can be done to stop them.