Maracaibo

Ten years before John Wayne did the Hellfighters another film that was clearly based on oil fire fighter Red Adair was made by Cornel Wilde on location in Venezuela. Maracaibo starred Wilde and Mrs. Wilde Jean Wallace together with Abbe Lane, Francis Lederer, Joe E. Ross and Michael Landon.

Although there was the usual rough house in the Wayne film, Maracaibo for the first two thirds is a second rate romance. The film gets really good only when the oil fire fighting gets started. The reason for that was that Wilde was trying to showcase Jean Wallace who plays a romance novelist. She and Abbe Lane, a girl who's been around vy for Wilde. Lane has history with Wilde, but she's also engaged to marry Lederer who plays a deaf and dumb oil millionaire who signs throughout the film and his words are interpreted by Landon, an orphan kid who Lederer raised.

Maracaibo did not have the budget Hellfighters did and it shows. Still producer Wilde got good results for actor Wilde and the rest of the cast. I must also point out a nice performance by Joe E. Ross in the sidekick role to Wilde.

The location shooting added to the authenticity of the film. If he had cut out the romance and say made Jean Wallace a female oil fire fighter in that male preserve this could have been a classic. As it is it's an average good action film.

Cornell Wilde is a Texan with one of those appearing/disappearing accents. He flies into Caracas, goes water-skiing in his ice-cream suit, tries to put out an oil-well fire in the water fields. He also makes a play for best-selling author Jean Wallace. She's interested, but a bit frigid at first, and there's Wilde's ex-fiancee Abbe Lane.

There are some shots of Venezuela and the oil wells on fire are composited in from the Salton Sea. I can't judge the excellence of the technical work, because the copy I looked at had been a poor VHS tape at some stage, with the sort of blocky artifacts common to those. With Francis Lederer, Joe E. Ross, and Michael Landon as the green kid who fouls up.