Dark Of The Sun

Dark of the Sun (1968)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Jack Cardiff

Starring: Rod Taylor, Peter Carsten, Yvette Mimieux, Jim Brown

From: MGM

Here is a movie I've heard about for awhile via a forum, but have never seen it despite it being on TCM once in a blue moon, as when it's on it's at weird times, like it was late Thursday night. I did not know it was on until about 40 minutes in, so I was disappointed by that. My mood lightened when I looked online and I saw it was on Veoh. You just download the free player and it allows you to watch anything on there.

I'll copy and paste the short plot description from its IMDb page:

A band of mercenaries led by Captain Curry travel through the Congo across deadly terrain, battling rival armies, to rescue $25 million in uncut diamonds.

Yep, that sums things up pretty well... except it was actually 50 million dollars in diamonds.

This movie (actually filmed in the UK and Jamaica instead of deepest darkest Africa) is pretty darn good. Things get started right away as you see Curry (Taylor) and Ruffo (Brown) arrive in the Congo as it's in the midst of the Simba Rebellion. In short, it's a real-life rebellion starting in '64 where some anti-government people tried to start a revolution. For the sake of this film, all you need to know is that the mercenaries are hired by the President of the country to go to a mine in Simba country to retrieve some diamonds so that the rebels don't have them in their possession. They find an alcoholic doctor and also an ex-Nazi (Carsten) who only gets hired for his military skill. Via train they travel there and back, and along the way they meet up with nice eye candy Mimieux.

I don't want to give too much away but even in 2012 the action you see here is satisfying. You have fire, explosions, big guns being fired-along with small ones-fights, and so on and so forth. There's even a moment where one guy gets his head forced onto a train track, as his enemy wants his head run over! That's pretty ruthless. Not to mention, all the people getting killed Also, there's the natural conflict with the damn Nazi, so that provides a lot of drama. And I mean that in a good way.

It's a grand aventure which I wish was more easily accessible as it deserves to be better known than it is, and I don't mean watching it on Veoh; I mean a nice Blu-Ray. Yeah, I enjoyed watching it that much. It's a good old manly time with enough action (it's graphic for the time), drama, and intrigue to entertain you and never leaving you feel bored or disappointed.

I'll be back Wednesday night with a new review.