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Waste of time

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

This movie tries so hard to be funny, yet it falls flat every time. Just another example of recycled ideas repackaged with women in an attempt to appeal to a certain audience.

Copyright 1956 by Warwick Film Productions. Released worldwide through Columbia Pictures. New York opening at the Globe: 26 December 1956. U.S. release: January 1957. U.K. release: 11 February 1957. Australian release: 12 April 1957. Sydney opening at the Capitol (ran one week). Original running time: 99 minutes. Censored to 94 minutes (USA), 95 minutes (UK), 97 minutes (Aust).COMMENT: Anita Ekberg was a popular pin-up beauty of the 1950s. Popular in just about all countries except Australia. Here, aside from me, she had virtually no following at all. I remember watching her cavort through Zarak at Sydney's Capitol back in April 1957. The Capitol was a huge place — in fact it was Sydney's largest cinema — but at the session I attended no more than 23 of its 2,773 seats were occupied. Yet up the road at the Prince Edward, Audrey Hepburn was pulling in capacity crowds with War and Peace. And this despite the fact that Miss Ekberg's dance to the strains of "Climb Up the Wall" had censors worldwide reaching for their scissors and splicing cement. In fact the number was completely deleted in New Zealand and drastically pruned in the United States. These facts were thoroughly publicized, but Australian picture-goers regarded Miss Ekberg with contempt. Despite more publicity than Marilyn Monroe, she didn't rate a single success in Australia (unless of course you count "War and Peace"). Aside from La Dolce Vita and Four for Texas, Oz receipts from her starring movies didn't even cover their advertising expenses.Well, as I say, I quite enjoyed this Boy's Own Paper tale of the British Raj skirmishing with outlaws on the Peshawar Frontier, when I first saw it on the Capitol's giant CinemaScope screen. And Miss Ekberg's dance turn proved an absolute delight.But, sad to say, Zarak has not improved with age. Miss Ekberg's number now looks so innocuous, we wonder how on earth censors from Aabenraa to Zyrardow were so myopic as to create such explosive flak. And as for the rest of the players: Victor Mature with his agonizing facial contortions that passed for "acting" in the mid- 50s, and stolid British actors like Finlay Currie and Bernard Miles so obviously uncomfortable in greasepaint... Admittedly, the players were hampered by ridiculous dialogue and a dreary plot. Of course the general ineptness of Mr Young's direction was no help either. And all that obvious inter-cutting of genuine action and location footage with incredibly banal studio interiors. Not very exciting to begin with, and that murky grainy, early CinemaScope photography makes everything look even worse.Hard to credit that no less than three units contributed to this lackluster mess. Young and Wilcox presumably headed the main unit, while Canutt supplied the half-hearted action footage. Heaven knows what Gilling and his unit did – and frankly I can't see any eager- tailed researchers pressing him to find out. Perhaps the DVD distributors are right. Perhaps "Zarak" is best forgotten.

"Zarak" gets off to a roaring start - with us entering the Arabian village where Anita Ekberg's character lives with her old husband, being acquainted with her lusty relationship with his son (Victor Mature) and the father catching them in the act and sentencing them both to death - all within the first ten minutes of the film!!!! After that, it sort of delves into non-stop rebel war fighting scenes, which aren't that engrossing or all that well filmed - only momentarily catching up with Ekberg and her turgid relationship with Mature here and there. There are some very "American" touches of humour which clearly separate this US sword and sandal flick from the much more common Italian ones. But Anita Ekberg's scantily-clad dances, and sizzling seduction scenes are reason enough to seek out this title and sit through the yawn- inducing battle scenes which make up most of the movie.

This movie reminds me my childhood, on Sunday afternoons, when I waited for it. Each Sunday, after my home school work. Colourful feature with plenty of charm and action, Victor Mature at his best, even a less famous film if you compare to his previous features. A movie produced by UK movie industry, in the line of BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR, BANDIT OF ZHOBE, NORTHWEST FRONTIER, and some other movies from Korda brothers's material. The pure British colonialism piece of work. A sort of trade mark, as was, in a total different way, the Kitchen Sink kind. The Ken Loach before his time. Back to this film directed by Terry Young and produced by Albert - James Bond - Broccoli, it is not flawless, but who cares, its only purpose was to entertain. That' all. I picked it from TCM in a superb LBX copy. I guess it will be released in DVD, as was other Columbia adventures yarns, such as BRIGAND OF KANDAHAR, and maybe some other items.

Having adopted the name of Patrick McGoohan's character as my web ID, I'd almost avoided obtaining a copy of this movie, on the grounds that if it was truly awful and McGoohan's part poor, then I would feel a bit of a fool (Quiet at the back!). Thankfully I can be proud to perpetuate the name: Moor Larkin! Some while ago I bought a copy of 'Zarak Khan', by AJ Bevan. It is possibly one of the strangest books I've ever read. Zarak is a man, born in the most savage of societies. The savagery isn't primitivism, but stems from the strange morality that is deemed to have developed on the 'North West Frontier' of the Indian sub-continent. The book was fore-worded by General Slim, so was no morbid piece of sensationalism. Zarak betrays and is betrayed by not almost, but every, single other character, in the story. Written in 1949, it evidently had some popularity. Read in 2007, I can only attribute that popularity to the recognition of the nihilistic randomness that had so recently afflicted the people of Britain during WWII. The book appears to make no sense from the viewpoint of late 20th Century Western social conscience. Set as it is, essentially in Afghanistan, there is a resonance again however in the 21st Century, as the randomness of reborn violence once again seems inescapable.So much for the background. What of the film? The production team that would so soon be responsible for the James Bond Franchise set about the job of making Zarak a 'Cinemascope Spectacular'. Indian subjects of the Raj are the bulk of the Redcoats forming rife-volleying ranks, reminiscent of the African-based 'Zulu', but in Zarak they form triple, rather than double ranks: one lying, one kneeling, one standing. Tribal horsemen crash to the ground in a hail of Lee-Enfield bullets. Michael Wilding is a political officer, trying to persuade the locals of the benefits of British rule. Most of them seem convinced. Moor Larkin, played by Patrick McGoohan has fewer illusions. "Burn their villages and fine their men" he advises Wilding's Major Ingram. Death and money are all the locals respond to, so far as Moor Larkin is concerned.Zarak, played by Victor Mature, seems to be proof that Larkin knows what he is talking about. Zarak doesn't dislike anyone. He doesn't care about anyone. That is the point! He has no feelings either way. Zarak is Zarak. That is enough. If Zarak needs to love, he loves. If Zarak needs to eat, he eats. If Zarak needs money, he takes it from whoever has it. If Zarak needs to kill, he kills. Zarak doesn't do any of this for a reason. He seeks no power. A natural tribal leader, with more ferocity than any of his peers, he has no wish to lead. He uses followers to achieve his goals and then moves on.The film follows the battles, both military and those of the will, between Zarak and the British authorities. McGoohans' Larkin leads the forces as he attempts to preserve the life of the wishful-thinking Political officer, and achieve the capture of the outlaw, Zarak.Zarak is given a lover in the film. The introduction of Anita Ekberg was possibly the box-office life of the movie, but it's artistic death. Eunice Gayson pops in as the love interest for Major Ingram, the political officer. Her role is quite useful and makes a lot more sense than Ms. Ekberg; not that that was Ms. Ekberg's fault: if the producers dress her in wispy silk and make her gyrate at key moments of the movie, she can hardly be taken very seriously by anyone, I suppose. In a similar way this difficult story becomes enmeshed in military spectacle. If you just watch the film, you'll enjoy parts of it, but be confused by the whole. If you read the book and then watch the film, you can read between the frames and notice that Victor Mature actually does quite a good job, as does Patrick Mcgoohan. I suspect that they might both have been greatly disappointed when they saw the finished movie. Victor Mature probably laughed and chalked it up as another example of the mad movie-world he was so familiar with. Patrick McGoohan possibly took things a lot more seriously and was so ticked off with the directors/producers that he refused to get involved with them again, when they came up with some secret agent nonsense in 1960. No, he famously said. Doctor No, they said.At the end of the movie, Zarak has given his life for Ingram. Moor Larkin explains that "Zarak hated the world. He gave his life, merely to show his contempt for that world and everyone in it". Ingram mumbles something about "Greater love hath no man, than he gives his life for an enemy". Moor Larkin probably got closest to the truth.