Der Schut

In the last phase of a brilliant career ,Robert Siodmak ,one of the past masters of film noir, proved he could age gracefully ;he had already broached the adventures movie ("cobra woman" "the crimson pirate" );if the former was rubbish ,the second one had a tongue-in-chick side which emerged again in the sixties,when he was granted wide screen and Lex Barker ,whose career was buoying in Germany where he got huge commercial success with the "Winnetou " saga in which he played Old Shatterhand.

Nevertheless, Siodmak was too clever a director to make his movie a vehicle for Barker; there are many scenes in which he does not appear , leaving room for the other actors : particularly Dieter Borsche , excellent as an English lord , British through and through ,who ,even in the most desperate predicament,keeps the stiff upper lip and would never, in a month of Sundays , miss his tea time ;with his servant ,Archibald, they seem to be out of a Jules Verne novel (a writer who probably inspired Karl May); Rik Battaglia is a suave villain, refined, eagle-eyed , as soon as he appears ,the viewer effortlessly guesses who he really is .

It's a good adventures movie , with lots of sudden new developments ,with a good use of wide screen and splendid colors ; of course the natives serve as foils to the Europeans ,but it was the rule of the game ; Indiana Jones , whose adventures are not that much different from Kara Ben 's ,did not change it either.