Yul Brynner ("Kongre") is the psuedo-sophisticate, but really rather brutal, captain of a pirate ship that quite cleverly decides to capture a lighthouse - manned by a fairly agile Kirk Douglas ("Denton") - and then disable the light so as to manage to wreck passing ships and salvage their luxury spoils whilst killing their crews. "Denton" escapes the purge of his own colleagues, but is unable to prevent this process proving remarkably successful until, that is, the arrival of "Arabella" (Samantha Eggar). "Denton" rather preposterously thinks she might be his ex-fiancée, and "Kongre" a woman upon whom he now fixates, offers her a life of luxury and fine clothes - albeit on their island stuck near the bottom of South America. The story is quite fun and both stars have clearly entered into the spirit of this pretty poorly budgeted and produced maritime yarn with little expectation that it will do either of their careers any good. The dialogue is neither here nor there, and the drama is strung out for way too long before an ending that was really just a bit too downbeat and tacky, then somewhat silly for me. Interesting to see two Hollywood stars reduced to this kind of film and even if Douglas did executive produce it, it's still pretty sad to see them fall quite this far from the top of the mountain.
**_Kirk Douglas vs. Yul Brynner & his pirates on a rocky coastal landscape in 1865_**
The events take place at a remote lighthouse near Tierra Del Fuego with the story based on Jules Verne’s “The Lighthouse at the End of World.” The French author wrote the first draft in 1901, and his son finished it after his death, 1905. Verne was inspired by the real-life lighthouse on the Isla de los Estados, Argentina, located at the southern tip of South America. Keep in mind that ships had to regularly take that long route before the Panama Canal was created in 1914.
The movie includes bits of “Mysterious Island” (1961) and “The Day the Fish Came Out” mixed with the grim, brutal tone of “The Last Valley,” the latter of which debuted six months earlier in 1971. So, this is not a kid-friendly film, but a life-or-death tale of extreme isolation and survival against savage people bent on evil. Speaking of which, the depiction of the pirates is more realistic than was the norm up to that point in cinematic history.
Douglas was 53 years-old during shooting, almost 54, whereas Brynner was 50. Samantha Eggar is on hand in the feminine department.
The story takes its time and so the characters have room to breathe in the inaccessible-but-scenic setting. The flick’s not for those who require an implausible action sequence every seven minutes.
It runs 2h 8m and was shot Aug-Nov 1970 in Spain with the lighthouse replica located in Cabo de Creus, which is in the extreme northeastern part of the country (Costa Brava in Catalonia, aka “the wild coast”), fifteen miles south of the border of France on the Mediterranean Sea.
GRADE: B
