GarnettTeenage The film was still a fun one that will make you laugh and have you leaving the theater feeling like you just stole something valuable and got away with it.

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

JohnHowardReid An Imperial Picture. Released through United Artists. Copyright 1959 by United Artists Corporation. No recorded New York opening. U.S. release: October 1959. U.K. release: 14 December 1958 (sic). Australian release: 21 May 1959. 8,205 feet. 91 minutes.COMPLETE SYNOPSIS: French Sudan during World War II. A seething cauldron of intrigue and violence, as nationalist natives try to wrest independence from France, prostrated under the heel of Nazi occupation. In this atmosphere, an American gun-runner (Victor Mature) acts as a go-between, the only individual acceptable at the same time to the French commandant (George Dolenz), the independence-seeking emir (John Dehner), and the great peace-loving Arab leader, Mohamet Adai (Leonard Mudie). While suspected by each side of favoring the other, the American succeeds in treading a middle road, carrying information to one side or the other as it suits his purposes. To try to keep the peace, he must unveil the plotting of the Emir, and to do this he must convince him that he is against the French. His best way of convincing the Emir is to get him to believe that the American is in love with the wife of the French commandant (Yvonne de Carlo) and thus has a personal basis for hating him, apart from considerations of gain or patriotism. The commandant and his wife lend themselves to this frame-up, and through it the local plot is foiled. But not before many of the French soldiers have been barbarically tortured, others killed in ambush, and the commandant finally fallen in battle. When peace is restored and the American and the commandant's widow ride off across the desert, it is apparent that what started as a trick to foil the native plot has blossomed into a real romance.COMMENT: Although contemporary reviewers hated it, I found this to be most entertaining, desert-adventure hokum, well up to director Jacques Tourneur's usual vigorously-paced standard. Tourneur's splendid efforts are abetted by breezy dialogue and a most agreeable cast. Victor Mature is in especially good form, and runs through his paces with a charmingly light touch. The action is well-staged, though arbitrary insertion of close-ups often detracts from the pace and atmosphere. Miss De Carlo looks attractive, but plays her role perfectly straight - as does George Dolenz. But Mature, Dehner, the villains and director Tourneur have a ball.Production values are first-class. Miss De Carlo's husband, Bob Morgan, performs some spectacular stunts including a forty-foot leap from the highest perch of a minaret, and an even lengthier fall down the staircase inside.

gridoon2018 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

bkoganbing 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.

dbdumonteil 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"