chrisdl_heath

Wonky hand-held camera work and zooming into so closely as to cut off the actors faces at the eyebrows led me to losing interest in the plot. I much prefer the early episodes shot in the late eighties and early nineties

This film can be summed up as follows: sumptuous photography; turgid plot; wooden acting.

The mystery is how they could string it out for two hours. The story is that there isn't a story - it's just a travelogue across the Libyan desert. Michael Craig, who was hot property in British cinema back then, is a blacked-up Arab sheik and has no lines that I can remember. Blink and you miss him. I just couldn't work out what Anthony Steele would see in the love interest. Donald Sinden looks as though he has the mood of someone who has got out of bed the wrong side every morning of the shoot.

The only thing that must have stopped this from bombing at the box office was the novelty for the cinema-going public in grey, smog-ridden 1950s Britain of seeing 'real', 'desert' sand in colour, something they could have done on the sea front at Clacton or Bournemouth.

Despite a low budget, this no frills unpretentious made-for-TV movie I found to be very enjoyable. It's silly and mad-cap. I found it refreshing when I watched it on a late night satellite channel. It's a pity there aren't more like this.

The cast gel together well and the direction and editing are reasonably slick. It was produced at a time when made-for-TV movies were often better than what was at the box-office.

Don't listen to those who say it's a load of rubbish - it isn't! It captures the period nicely and there is a clever use of some of the best songs of the time. I'd like to get the DVD, but it doesn't do the movie justice by all accounts.