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

William Giesin 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.

dinky-4 The early 50s saw the release of such colorful and entertaining "French Foreign Legion" movies as Burt Lancaster's "Ten Tall Men" and Alan Ladd's "Desert Legion." By the late 50s, however, the genre had lost its zest as evidenced by the glum, black-and-white "Timbuktu" which makes the mistake of taking seriously a second-rate script that moves sketchily-drawn characters through a somewhat muddled story.Two key miscastings further weaken the effort. In no way does Yvonne De Carlo seem like the French wife of a World War II military officer, and while John Dehner makes an amusingly-cynical villain, his voice and manner are far too American to make him seem anything more than a Hollywood actor in a costume.Another fault lies in the romance which suddenly blossoms between Yvonne De Carlo and Victor Mature. Having these two "fall" for each other at first sight simply caters to the notion that audiences expect a romance between a movie's leading man and leading lady.Victor Mature's character doesn't make much sense. On one hand he seems to be an amoral adventurer interested only in making money while on the other he's a courageous hero who risks his life in a noble cause. The movie can't have it both ways and its efforts to do so result in a central character who never fully engages our interest.Finally, there's something a bit troubling about that "holy man." He speaks favorably of France bringing doctors and teachers into the backward regions of the Sahara, and while one might applaud this sentiment, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing such a man would be saying and it borders on being a defense of colonialism."Timbuktu" does have moments of interest, most notably in its two torture scenes. The first involves a sweaty, bare-chested French lieutenant who's staked out, spreadeagle style, in the Emir's tent. As six poisonous tarantulas crawl hungrily toward him, the Emir questions the lieutenant about the number of French troops left in Timbuktu. The second torture scene puts Victor Mature in the same position, only this time there's just one tarantula and it's not crawling on the ground but rather suspended on a thread about Mature's face. As the tarantula struggles, it unravels the spool of thread and so lowers itself slowly toward its victim. This scene marks the fourth time in ten years that Mature was stripped to the waist -- thus displaying his famously-muscled chest -- put into bondage, and subjected to torture on the silver screen. (In 1949's "Samson and Delilah" he was blinded by a red-hot sword and chained to a grindstone; in 1953's "The Robe" he was stretched out on a table inside Caligula's torture chamber; in 1956's "Zarak" he was flogged in the first reel and again in the last reel -- fatally so.) No wonder Mature earned the title of being "The Most Tortured Torso in the Movies!"And yes, this movie does contain that notoriously "campy" line which Mature says to Yvonne De Carlo: "I've got the holy man stashed."

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"