Movie Reviews for Legend of the Lost (1957)

Legend of the Lost (1957)

	List Price: ~~$14.98~~ Our Price: $6.40 You Save: $8.58 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.49 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases

Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada

Movie Reviews of Legend of the Lost (1957)

Movie Review: The Duke was Indiana Jones' GRANDFATHER!
Summary: 2 Stars

LEGEND OF THE LOST (1957) must be one of the strangest and most pointless B-films ever made. Were it not for the fact that it stars John Wayne and Sofia Loren, and seems to have had a good budget, it would strain credibility. They didn't even give this a complete title!

Set in the city of Timbuktu (yes, that Timbuktu!), Mali (a west African country, my dears), we meet Joe January (Wayne) - drunken, worthless lout who reminds me of his Rooster Cogburn of 12 years later. He is pawned off on a bizarre French explorer, Dr. Bonnard (Rossano Brazzi of SOUTH PACIFIC fame). Thrown into the mix is Algerian prostitute Dita (Loren).

Dr. Bonnard, following the breadcrumb trail left by his father, is searching for the city of Ophir - which most scholars believe to have been in India, not Africa - and he needs Joe January to guide him across the Sahara to get to it. They meet Tuaregs, battle tarantulas and take turns peeping at Loren. The latter will prove to be their undoing, as you might expect.

What is most astonishing is that this film established a genre, as bad as it was: this is the original Indiana Jones adventure and I don't know how many other types of movies, all rolled into one obnoxious mess. Wayne's character is the most puzzling: he's an inexplicable presence, an American loafing in Timbuktu. Yet he is wise, compassionate and can read Latin better than Julius Caesar could .... What the hell?!

Amazingly, this film was shot in and around Tripoli, Libya, which is only a few hundred miles from Mali to the east; the gorgeous Roman ruins there served as the main backdrop. No one knows a lot about the Tuareg people so they wisely kept away from them, though they serve their purpose in the story. This was directed by Henry Hathaway, a big favorite of mine best known for other Wayne masterpieces such as TRUE GRIT (his last major film) and one of my sleeper favorites, 23 PACES TO BAKER STREET.

That is the reason I cannot fathom why this film is so bad. It is, in fact, bloody awful.

Movie Review: Legend of the Lost
Summary: 2 Stars

Although I am a dedicated fan of John Wayne and dearly love his movies, I found this movie, which I have never seen before, to be slow and for lack of a better word boring. I will view it again and add it to my collection because John Wayne is in it.

Movie Review: Not a legend, should have stayed lost
Summary: 1 Stars

High hokum, even for late '50's Hollywood. Poor Loren (23) is stuck with another pair of geezers for leading men (Wayne was 50). Compared to most of the actors the studios were trying to pair her with, maybe lover/mentor Carlo Ponti didn't look so ancient in comparison.

Loren, Wayne, and Brazzi spend most of the film stumbling around the Sahara looking for a lost city. There are some great postcard shots of what I believe may be the magnificent Roman city of Leptis Magna, in northwestern Libya. But this isn't a postcard...it's a motion picture. Veteran helmer Hathaway does his best with what may be one of Ben Hecht's worst writing efforts. The brilliant Technicolor cinematography overwhelms what is supposed to be an intimate portrait of three disparite characters.

Despite supposedly wandering endlessly in one of the hottest places on Earth, nobody gets so much as sunburned and Loren's coiffure and makeup stay intact. She's wearing a full-length dress and it never occurs to any of the characters that she'd be better off removing the skirt and putting something on her head to ward off the relentless sun. Wayne's Joe January may be gallant, but sensible fellow that he is, his gallantry never extends to offering the suffering Loren his hat (which would have made for a cute shot). January's character would have dumped the obviously nutzo Brazzi ten minutes into their ordeal.

There's no spark between Wayne and Loren until the very end, and what there is, is all Loren's doing. Their characters repeatedly approach death from dehydration and then miraculously recover their energy like Wile E. Coyote. Endless jabbering, badly matched studio shots...it's so dull you can't even get angry at it. But I did get a kick out of the last scene, where Loren spots a passing nomad caravan and waves frantically to them (she's supposed to be near-death from thirst, remember), yelling to the wounded Joe, "They're coming, Joe, they're coming!" as several camel riders peel off their direction.

The nomadic Tuareg I've met are good folks, but in that time and place the likelihood is that given the situation presented, they'd slit Joe January's throat and enslave Loren.

Movie Review: Somebody fell asleep at the wheel
Summary: 1 Stars

It is often fun to overly critize films made in other decades that often reflect a different attitude to what worked for audiences then. My memory of this film as a teenager stands up better than my views upon seeing this DVD resurrection. For instance, as soon as I saw the name Kurt Krasner in the credits this time, I recalled that it was a common practice to use certain actors over and over again, even though they were badly miscast each and every time. Mr. Krasner is cast as a French policeman in Timbuktu. The actor was often cast in exotic, foreign sounding roles. The problem was that, in Legend of the Lost, he never attempted a French accent. In fact, he never changed his accent or his delivery in any of his films. Ever! The fight scenes between Brazzi and Wayne (there are far too many of them) are amaturish; one camera angle actually shows Brazzi throwing a punch that misses Wayne's jaw by a good 12 inches! Where was the director, Henry Hathaway, a seasoned vertan, when this happened? The soundtrack element used for this DVD transfer was very poor; it has a thin, tin-like quality. I've heard better in the various TV versions of this film. I find that to be true of many DVD's. I'm glad I rented this DVD rather than simply relying on my memory and buying it outright. That saved me some hard-earned money.