Doubtless, the weirdest score even written by Miklos Rozsa, a pounding of drums and a howling chant by the Africans of Hollywood. Maddening. Enough to send Walter Neff into an epileptiform seizure.
A bit slow out of the starting gate. Bruce Cabot and Reginald Gardiner are two British officers in charge of an army outpost in northern Africa in the early years of World War II. Their soldiers are committed native troops, unlike the neighboring Shenzi tribe who are warlike and xenophobic. Cabot's and Gardiner's sole enemy POW is Joseph Calleia, an Italian Captain who has given himself up to the British and now takes pride in his cooking. There's not much to do. "Miles and miles of nothing to do," remarks Gardiner.
(PS: Kids, Italy joined Germany in fighting the Allies in Europe. This is World War II, the one that came after World War I.)
But then George Sanders arrives and takes command of the post, a humorless by-the-book officer who brings news that the Shenzi are being provided with modern weapons by the Germans. The pace picks up when the Brits are joined by the young Gene Tierney, owner of hundreds of boutique shops around the world, half Arabic, leading her camel caravan through the desert.
Yes, the pace picks up. How could it not, when she sprawls so languorously in her "Arabic" get-up across a bed so large that Moby Dick could sleep in it, in the bedroom of her Hollywood mansion with its filmy drapes, beaded curtains and its candles? She's supine on that bed because she was nicked by a bullet fired by a Thompson sub-machine gun into Bruce Cabot's sparser military quarters. It may be the first time that tracer bullets are depicted on screen, and put to effective use. Director Hathaway was no artistic genius but he knew how to put a movie together.
It ends in a proper shoot out and a sentimental death.
It's not a major picture and it does drag at times but it isn't badly done.
A bit slow out of the starting gate. Bruce Cabot and Reginald Gardiner are two British officers in charge of an army outpost in northern Africa in the early years of World War II. Their soldiers are committed native troops, unlike the neighboring Shenzi tribe who are warlike and xenophobic. Cabot's and Gardiner's sole enemy POW is Joseph Calleia, an Italian Captain who has given himself up to the British and now takes pride in his cooking. There's not much to do. "Miles and miles of nothing to do," remarks Gardiner.
(PS: Kids, Italy joined Germany in fighting the Allies in Europe. This is World War II, the one that came after World War I.)
But then George Sanders arrives and takes command of the post, a humorless by-the-book officer who brings news that the Shenzi are being provided with modern weapons by the Germans. The pace picks up when the Brits are joined by the young Gene Tierney, owner of hundreds of boutique shops around the world, half Arabic, leading her camel caravan through the desert.
Yes, the pace picks up. How could it not, when she sprawls so languorously in her "Arabic" get-up across a bed so large that Moby Dick could sleep in it, in the bedroom of her Hollywood mansion with its filmy drapes, beaded curtains and its candles? She's supine on that bed because she was nicked by a bullet fired by a Thompson sub-machine gun into Bruce Cabot's sparser military quarters. It may be the first time that tracer bullets are depicted on screen, and put to effective use. Director Hathaway was no artistic genius but he knew how to put a movie together.
It ends in a proper shoot out and a sentimental death.
It's not a major picture and it does drag at times but it isn't badly done.