Timbuktu

This story is supposed to happen during WW2 ,but it quickly leaves this historical context for exotic horizons.The presence of a short-haired Yvonne De Carlo(in order to give her a "French" style?),a hairdo that does not become her at all,increases this feeling.The script is rather poor,every time a French soldier is introduced,be sure to hear the first bars of "La Marseillaise".There are a lot of betrayals,attacks,a big-heart raider (guess whom,De Carlo ,a French officer's wife, will fall in love with ?).Two very sadistic scenes:a baddie -Arab of course- gives French lieutenant as a snack to his lethal tarantulas,and he wants to reiterate this very bad deed with Victor Mature himself.Will he survive?Do not bother.If you want to see a good Jack (or Jacques ) Tourneur movie,do choose "cat people" instead,or, better, "out of the past"

For once it's not the Foreign Legion dashing off against villains in the Saharas, but Victor Mature courting the wife of the French officer in charge, who doesn't seem to mind much. It's always a pleasure to see Victor Mature on the screen, there is no one like him for imposing stature and a kind of brutal but benevolent charm, and Yvonne de Carlo is just the girl for him. It's not a great film, but the tempo is swift, there is nothing wrong with the action and the story, and it even amounts to some suspense towards the end, but it is not a very deep investigation of Muslim mentality and mystery but just another account of another power-crazy local gangster, a beduin speaking perfect English, with some intrigue concerning sewing machines. A decent beefy entertainment with a lot of shooting ambushes, crawling in the sand, running for life on horses and without, great risking in disguises and many casualties, most of them anonymous. Jacques Tourneur has made the best of it backed by decent enough music.

Unofficial sequel (methinks so, anyway) to Yvonne De Carlo's Fort Algiers, this hot and heavy desert drama arrives at the end of Miss De Carlo's initial leap into a Hollywood film career, 1945-59, just before her semi-retirement, and prior to her reemergence as "Lilly Munster," the antithesis of Donna Reed's more perfectly molded vision of motherhood. In this one, American Mature is running guns to the Tuareg tribes, while a French garrison, led by Dolenz, tries their very best to thwart the rebellion and any colonial retribution residue to follow. A love triangle soon erects itself between De Carlo, Dolenz and Mature. It's all very civilized and modern. Dolenz doesn't put up much of a fight. I would. De Carlo is definitely worth fighting for. John Dehner, who played a good guy in Fort Algiers, turns around and becomes the demented, evil Emir in this one. Another sadistic rebel has a scar running down the entire length of his face. Dehner tests one of Mature's automatic weapons on the fellow with the hideous scar. He dies. He later will turn up planted in the Emir's vegetable garden. Nice one. Green thumb? Spiders are cleverly enlisted to torture and kill the French. An Iman is rescued, secreted and forgotten along the way. Strange stuff: a long trek across the sands reveals some legionnaires impaled on spears, like shish-kabobs at an oasis barbecue. It's all a bit convoluted and thematically tangled. But, for the most part, highly recommended for folks who enjoy a few Camels with their Tuareg coffee.

1942: Conway, a renegade American, is running guns to the Arabs in North Africa. But when Colonel Dufort, the new commander in Timbuktu, and his beautiful wife Natalie arrive, Conway agrees to work for the French cause.

Victor Mature plays an American adventurer who plays both sides of the fence by selling guns to the Arab rebels yet spying on the rebels for the Foreign Legion. A real chess player. It's an interesting characterisation amidst the familiar desert adventure with skirmishes, double cross, gunrunning, men impaled like shish kebabs in the hot sun, the colonel who is obsessed with his job and neglects his wife and the wife falls for the hero ( Victor Mature). Still enjoyable, especially if you accept it for what it is -an old-fashioned yet thoroughly decent and efficiently made dessert action adventure. After all, it is directed by the great Jacques Tournier. He keeps things ticking with plenty of action - there's an exciting shoot out at its conclusion- and a nifty plot. Just wish it was in colour. Despite John Dehner being rather miscast as the emir, he does well as the villain who has a penchant of using creep crawlies as torture devices. Yvonne DeCarlo sizzles like always. There's a nice quip by Victor Mature when the holy man says "May Allah's blessing be with you." Victor's reply: "Hope they are bullet proof."

One of the poorest areas on the globe yet its very name conjures up exotic places of the past, Timbuktu the city serves as the title for a routine action/adventure film starring Victor Mature. Interesting that it came out when it did as the French were busy grappling with losing their colonial empire of which Timbuktu was a part. At that time it was a part of French West Africa though the name Soudan for the region is used and correctly.

Victor Mature plays a smuggler of no particular loyalties who is doing business with whomever in the region as a new commander of the garrison at Timbuktu comes to take over. George Dolenz is unhappy with being sent out of France during the hour of her greatest peril in 1940, but somebody's needed to keep the Tuareg tribes in line.

Who are threatening a revolt under the leadership of Emir John Dehner and who has a local mullah in Leonard Mudie held captive and under his thumb. Dehner wants to use the mullah's influence to incite a revolt. Sounds very familiar for today's audience.

While all the politics is going on Mature is also checking out Yvonne DeCarlo and who could blame him. However Timbuktu comes nowhere near as good as that other wartime classic with the name of a city set in French colonial Africa, Casablanca. No one will ever mistake Mature and DeCarlo for Bogey and Bergman.

Still the film should please fans of Victor Mature although his work declined after he left 20th Century Fox.