Bengazi

This is a prime example of a cast elevating an otherwise mediocre production. Victor McLaglen, who is always a welcome face, even in bad films like The Abductors, practically steals the show away from his costars, so much so that when his character is eliminated, the rest of the film is hampered by his absence. That being said, the rest of the cast members are no slouches either; they just cannot match the energy that McLaglen is bringing.

The story can be distilled down to a single sentence: A group of men set out into the desert of Benghazi in search of a hidden case of gold and find themselves under siege by armed natives who also want that gold. This film could have been content to leave it at that and it would have been a perfectly serviceable action drama, but it would have lacked heart. To give it that, we have Aileen Donovan (Mala Powers), the daughter of Robert Emmett Donovan (Victor McLaglen), who has arrived in Benghazi looking for her father. While he is delighted with her arrival it comes right before he and two other men, John Gillmore (Richard Conte) and Selby (Richard Erdman) are set on their quest for the gold. Through some plot machinations, Aileen and Insp. Levering (Richard Carlson), a man trying to pin down Robert for his criminal actions, end up out in the desert, held up alongside Robert and the others, as the bullets are flying and people are dying. 

Without the added element of Aileen and her quest to find her father, this would feel like a lesser attempt at the magic of a film such as Sahara with Humphrey Bogart. Indeed, there is some shared DNA between the two, though Bengazi isn’t nearly as polished a film. This comes from the less skilled hands of director John Brahm whose filmography is full of schlock. This would be his last film for more than a decade before he would return for one final production, Hot Rods to Hell, an attempt at bringing to life a story about teenagers and violence that was first published in the Saturday Evening Post. . His work in Bengazi is serviceable, but nothing more. The actors, though, make this worth the watch, livening a plot that is fairly basic and giving it enough heart to smooth out the bumps along the way. 1955 - 79 minutes