Maracaibo (1958) User Reviews

Another version of Red Adair

[bkoganbing · 5/10 · 21 November 2015]

Ten years before John Wayne did the Hellfighters another film that was clearly based on oil fire fighter Red Adair was made by Cornel Wilde on location in Venezuela. Maracaibo starred Wilde and Mrs. Wilde Jean Wallace together with Abbe Lane, Francis Lederer, Joe E. Ross and Michael Landon.

Although there was the usual rough house in the Wayne film, Maracaibo for the first two thirds is a second rate romance. The film gets really good only when the oil fire fighting gets started. The reason for that was that Wilde was trying to showcase Jean Wallace who plays a romance novelist. She and Abbe Lane, a girl who's been around vy for Wilde. Lane has history with Wilde, but she's also engaged to marry Lederer who plays a deaf and dumb oil millionaire who signs throughout the film and his words are interpreted by Landon, an orphan kid who Lederer raised.

Maracaibo did not have the budget Hellfighters did and it shows. Still producer Wilde got good results for actor Wilde and the rest of the cast. I must also point out a nice performance by Joe E. Ross in the sidekick role to Wilde.

The location shooting added to the authenticity of the film. If he had cut out the romance and say made Jean Wallace a female oil fire fighter in that male preserve this could have been a classic. As it is it's an average good action film.

No heat among these flames.

[mark.waltz · 3/10 · 22 May 2022]

A laughably bad action romance film set in Venezuela and dealing with oil fighters, one of umpteen films starring rugged Cornel Wilde and blonde Jean Wallace, the anti-vixen femme fatale, one of half a dozen or so films the married couple appeared in together. The real femme fatale here is Abbe Lane whom Wilde refers to as a tramp, once engaged to Wilde but now involved with his wealthy friend Francis Lederer. Young Michael Landon (bizarrely cast as a Venezuelan) is Lederer's right hand man who has the goods on Lane yet has a panic attack while dealing with an oil rig fire that leads to tragedy.

This is the "Gone With the Wind" of oil rig fire movies, just as "Underwater" was the "GWTW" of pearl diving films, completely over the top and often unintentionally funny. Wallace's character, supposedly a best-selling romance advice book writer, is a completely annoying character, clinging and a bit whiny, reminding me of "My Friend Irma's" Marie Wilson, but with brains. The film is over produced on many levels, with its emotional characters as overly dramatic as the musical score that accompanies the film. A solo guitar version of "Ave Maria" had me laughing unintentionally. It's easy to see why the author of the novel, Stirling Silliphant, referred to this as a piece of garbage. Hopefully he was happier with the other version of that, "Hellfighters", starring John Wayne.