A light and so-so adventure adventure movie , set mostly in Morocco about an adventurer who sets out to recover his lost love. This routine and agreeable film but with no too much interest movie turns out to be entertaining and amusing enough. In the picture there are fights, combats, swordsplay, betrayals, and lots of noisy action, including a spectacular attack on the enemy fortress . Salem, Massachusetts, 1800. Mountaineer trapper Jason Starbuck (Jeff Chandler) rides into town with furs to sell and dreams to fulfill. Shortly after , he falls in love with Roxana Reil (Rhonda Fleming) , a wealthy and gorgeous girl who struggles for getting her lover , as she surprisingly goes France to await Jason . Then , Roxana's ship is assaulted by sea pirates, subsequently caught into slavery in Morocco , and sold to a Moroccan harem, there she is taken by Omar Id-Din's (Rex Reason) , Sultan's lieutenant . Jason goes after her to Morocco and must win the support of the sultan (Lee J. Cobb) in order to go on his efforts to locate and rescue her. Every passionate moment of the strangest adventure ever told !
Enjoyable Oriental adventure movie with major wonders, noisy action, pursuits , sword-play and spectacular fights, though the flick can not be taking itself entirely seriously . This film is made at one time, in which Universal International Pictures was a studio quite noted for its Oriental or Eastern adventure movies and here manages to bring a decent yarn, though neither notable, nor extraordinary, but acceptable . As this one results to be an Oriental action/adventure with usual actors of the genre, ordinary ingredients, and proceedings are very much oh the light-hearted side. Based on an enormous novel by Edison Marshall and compressed into around 90 minutes with no really losing much of the story. Stars the handsome Jeff Chandler as trapper Jason Starbuck who falls for a beautiful Massachusetts girl , and he has to rescue her from slavery when sea pirates capture her . Jeff starred various films until his early death at 42 while shooting Merril's Marauders . He performed various genres particularly Adventure, Wartime and Western, such as : Away all boats, Man in the shadow, Because of you, The Jayhawkers, Red ball express, Return to Peyton Place, being especially famous for playing chief Cochise in Broken arrow , The battle of Apache Pass, Taza son of Cochise, for whom the grey-hair had won considerable popularity . And what better co-starring could there have been than the sweet redhair Rhonda Fleming , here performing a smoldering, passionate princess who breaks her previous engagement and leaves for France. She along with Maureen O'Hara , Yvonne de Carlo were three of the best action women and swashbuckleresses in the Hollywood business . As she acted especially in adventure , swashbucklers and Film Noir . She has appeared in over 40 films, including David O. Selznick's Spellbound (1945), directed by Alfred Hitchcock; Jacques Tourneur's Out of the past (1947); and Robert Siodmak's Spiral staircase (1946). She later got starring roles in such classics as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1948), Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957), While the cily sleeps (1958), Pony Express (1953), Slightly Scarlet (1956), Mientras Nueva York duerme (1956) and The big circus (1959) . Later on , she played in TV as guest-star on numerous television series, including Wagon train (1957), Police woman (1974), Love boat(1977), Last Hours Before Morning (1975) and a two-hour special of McMillan and wife (1971). Both of whom are well accompanied by a good support cast , such as : the gorgeous and likeable Mamie Van Doren who steals the show as a jealous slave , the miscasted Lee J. Cobb, the nasty Rex Reason ,Benny Rubin , Arthur Space, Philip Van Zandt , Tudor Owen , among others .
It packs a colorful and gleaming cinematography in Technicolor by Carl E. Guthrie . As well as vibrant and thrilling musical score from Universal's regular : Hans J. Salter , William Lava , Milton Rosen , though uncredited .The motion picture produced by Howard Christie for Universal Pictures , was professionally directed by Joseph Pevney , but with no much originality . Joseph Pevney was a notorious actor and director who born on September 15, 1911 in New York City, and he died on May 18, 2008 in Palm Desert, California . After World War II he acted with Paul Muni's Los Angeles-based "Key Largo" troupe. He acted in only five films (1946-1950), all of them films noir, his first as a piano-playing killer in Nocturno (1946). He spent most of his career behind the camera and his first film as a director was Shakedown (1950) in which he makes a Hitchcock-style cameo as Keller the reporter, his last on-screen part. He was a director and actor, being especially known for Star Trek (1966), Tammy, and the bachelor (1957) and The man of one thousand faces (1957) . Pevney directed a lot of movies of all kinds of genres such as Wartime : Torpedo run , Away all boats , Air cadet. Adventures as Yankee Pasha , Tammy , Twilight for the God, Congo crossing ,Ring circus , Legion of desert . Western : Lady from Texas , The plunderers . Thriller : Undercover girl , Flesh and fury , Man of a thousand faces , Iron Man , Shakedown , The strange Door , 6 bridges to cross , Istanbul. After spending the 1950s as a contract director at Universal, he switched to television where his early credits include five episodes of Alfred Hitchcock presents (1962). Rating . 5.5/10 , acceptable and passable . The film will appeal to Jeff Chandler and Rhonda Fleming fans . Worthwhie watching.
