Too much of everything

A Disappointing Continuation

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The first - and FATAL - mistake of this movie was the decision (I don't know whose, I suppose either the producer's or the director's) to film it in black and white. Drained of color, the deserts, skies, palaces, horses, turbans, etc. are robbed off their potential visual appeal and Sudan looks far less exotic and inviting than it could. The other problems include an uninteresting story, a thankless role for Yvonne De Carlo (although there is some heat between her and Victor Mature), and a rather disagreeable, at least for some, pro-colonial spirit. Two sequences involving "tarantula torture" are pretty much the only memorable parts of this movie. *1/2

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.

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.

The early 50s saw the release of such colorful and entertaining "French Foreign Legion" movies as Burt Lancaster's "Ten Tall Men" and Alan Ladd's "Desert Legion." By the late 50s, however, the genre had lost its zest as evidenced by the glum, black-and-white "Timbuktu" which makes the mistake of taking seriously a second-rate script that moves sketchily-drawn characters through a somewhat muddled story.Two key miscastings further weaken the effort. In no way does Yvonne De Carlo seem like the French wife of a World War II military officer, and while John Dehner makes an amusingly-cynical villain, his voice and manner are far too American to make him seem anything more than a Hollywood actor in a costume.Another fault lies in the romance which suddenly blossoms between Yvonne De Carlo and Victor Mature. Having these two "fall" for each other at first sight simply caters to the notion that audiences expect a romance between a movie's leading man and leading lady.Victor Mature's character doesn't make much sense. On one hand he seems to be an amoral adventurer interested only in making money while on the other he's a courageous hero who risks his life in a noble cause. The movie can't have it both ways and its efforts to do so result in a central character who never fully engages our interest.Finally, there's something a bit troubling about that "holy man." He speaks favorably of France bringing doctors and teachers into the backward regions of the Sahara, and while one might applaud this sentiment, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing such a man would be saying and it borders on being a defense of colonialism."Timbuktu" does have moments of interest, most notably in its two torture scenes. The first involves a sweaty, bare-chested French lieutenant who's staked out, spreadeagle style, in the Emir's tent. As six poisonous tarantulas crawl hungrily toward him, the Emir questions the lieutenant about the number of French troops left in Timbuktu. The second torture scene puts Victor Mature in the same position, only this time there's just one tarantula and it's not crawling on the ground but rather suspended on a thread about Mature's face. As the tarantula struggles, it unravels the spool of thread and so lowers itself slowly toward its victim. This scene marks the fourth time in ten years that Mature was stripped to the waist -- thus displaying his famously-muscled chest -- put into bondage, and subjected to torture on the silver screen. (In 1949's "Samson and Delilah" he was blinded by a red-hot sword and chained to a grindstone; in 1953's "The Robe" he was stretched out on a table inside Caligula's torture chamber; in 1956's "Zarak" he was flogged in the first reel and again in the last reel -- fatally so.) No wonder Mature earned the title of being "The Most Tortured Torso in the Movies!"And yes, this movie does contain that notoriously "campy" line which Mature says to Yvonne De Carlo: "I've got the holy man stashed."