Cairo

Of course don't expect to find in this British movie the magnificence of the John Huston's genuine, authentic material. But George Sanders brings his own touch and nobody can regret that. The basic scheme remains the same as in the original. The actors are less powerful as the American cast but this Wolf Rilla's movie is worth watching, and also a bit rare, hard to catch. I won't say it is a masterpiece but for anyone interested in crime films from all over the world, and from old times, this one is absolutely for you. And Cairo atmosphere, settings brings something exotic, quite different from the urban jungle of the ASHALT JUNGLE;

George Sanders, fresh out of prison, has developed a plan to steal King Tut's jewels, worth a fortune. He enlists an old friend and then gets in contact with a small group of men. Unfortunately for these guys, there are lots of pitfalls along the way because of the human element, mostly that of greed. The guy who is going to finance the operation and the fencing of the artifacts, turns out to want the whole thing. The deed is done but a stray bullet takes out one of the men. There are others who want in and we also have an unstable man who is explosive and dangerous to himself an others. When it's all over, one wonders why he bothered. Even Sanders is sort of blah.

A b&w crime caper starring George Sanders, Richard Johnson, and several leading Egyptian movie stars, including Faten Hamama, Ahmed Mazhar, Kamal El Shinawi, Shwikar, Salah Nazmi, Nahed Sabri, Ezzat El Alaili, Yousuf Shaaban, and Said Abu Bakr.

Sanders is a British thief who comes to Cairo to recruit and lead an international team of villains to rob a collection of King Tut jewels from the Cairo Museum. The team includes a Brit lock-busting expert who has settled in Cairo and married a local girl; a Greek underground gambling-joint operator, a Turkish import/export businessman, an Egyptian driver, and an young Egyptian hashish addict.

Each character on the team is attached to a subplot.

Not a bad production. Filming took place in Cairo. Rewarding scenes from bazaars, marketplaces, cabarets, inner city streets; as well as rural scenery. Some claim that the film is a nearly scene-by-scene remake of John Huston's "The Asphalt Jungle". Available on YouTube. Rated a weak to fair 5.4 on IMDb.

I knew that Faten Hamamah, the Egyptian superstar, played a role once in am MGM movie. But it didn't know it was Cairo until I had seen the movie.

Faten Hamamah has been the biggest female superstar in Egyptian cinema since the 50s but unlike Omar Sharif, her ex-husband who became a Hollywood superstar after he got an excellent chance to show his abilities in Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago though he was not the best Arab actor at that time; unfortunately this movie did not give her a fare chance to be an international superstar.

Anyhow, still many Arabs, including myself, want to hear and see Faten Hamamah (and some other Egyptian stars at that time) speaks English!

A fairly decent remake of The Asphalt Jungle - on its own terms.

The director Rilla stuck reasonably closely to John Huston's film script.

I would have given this 6, but the presence of George Sanders and Walter Rilla add a touch of much needed class.

Richard Johnson 'browning up' as an Arab is somewhat outré, though Johnson is slightly more convincing than Sterling Hayden in the original. The scene where Sanders is entranced by a belly dancing lady is also more believable than Sam Jaffe being entranced by a young woman jiving to juke box tunes in a small diner.

Worth watching as a curio and to compare it scene by scene to The Asphalt Jungle.