if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

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

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

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

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.

My take on the Jacques Tourneur film "Timbuktu" is simply this ... it was not as good as I would have liked it to have been. The photography, the camera work, and the scenic movie sets deserved better. This mediocre adventure film virtually suffers from it's lack of color. Director Jacques Tourneur approach to the film seems to indicate that he chose a black and white film noir type of brush similar to the one he used with such classics such as "Out of the Past", "Cat People", and "I Walked With A Zombie" rather than use the Technicolor type of brush normally required for the usual Saturday Matinée Adventure film. It's hard for me to be critical of this film as I have always been a big fan of actor, Victor Mature, as he comes from my hometown, Louisville, Kentucky. Apparently, Victor Mature had some close ties with Director Tourneur as well as actor George Dolenz. He appeared in Tourneur's "Easy living" (1947), and with Dolenz son, Mickey, in the Monkeys movie "Head" (1968). The cast (Victor Mature, Yvonne De Carlo, George Dolenz, and John Dehner) render remarkable performances given the almost comedic dialog they were given. In one scene, Dehner tortures a Foreign Legionaire by allowing tarantulas to crawl all over him in an attempt to force a confession causing Mature to remark ... "Which one of those spiders was your mother?". In another scene when the unfaithful wife (De Carlo) realizes that the husband she believes to be a coward (Dolenz) is going to rescue her lover (Mature), she tries to tell him how ashamed she is. Her husband stops her and says, "I am sorry that I failed you. It isn't that I didn't ... don't love you ... It's just that I didn't think war was a time for love. Perhaps I was wrong." Add a holy man, Mohamet Adani, to the mix that just happens to look a lot like Woody Allen. The Mohamet, after being rescued from being kidnapped by the evil Emir (John Dehner), tells his rescuer, Mature.... "that he is anxious to return to his Mosque" Their perilous journey to safety is really hard to swallow. The final result which I found myself in ... was just trying to hold back the laughs ... when the laughs really weren't called for in the script.

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"