Having been familiar with Talbot Mundy's original source novel via a "Classics Illustrated" comic-book version I had read in the early 1980s (my father still owns a very nice collection of these dating back to his own childhood), it had always seemed strange to me how scarce 20th Century Fox's film version shot in the prestigious Cinemascope ratio and starring popular movie star Tyrone Power really was. Over the years, I only recall 2 screenings in my neck of the woods (on Italian and Cable TV) but it was never released on VHS; I suppose that it does get shown on the "Fox Movie Channel" once in a while but there is still no legitimate DVD in sight despite many lesser Power movies having already made it onto the digital format! Recently, I did come across a copy of that local Cable TV screening of the mid-1990s which, being typically pan-and-scanned, soft-looking and occasionally hazy, betrayed its origins as a VHS-to-DVD transfer! Although I am grateful for the opportunity to finally see it (since I generally lap these exotic adventures up), I have to say that I was surprisingly underwhelmed by the end results. Everybody involved seems to be working below-par somehow: at 39, Power is still handsome enough as the half-caste Captain hero but his romance with the annoying heroine Terry Moore (who was 15 years his junior!) comes off as decidedly unconvincing. The cast is rounded up by a stiff upper-lipped Michael Rennie (as Moore's father and Power's superior), John Justin (playing a foppish, racist Lieutenant and Power's romantic rival) and Guy Rolfe (whose zesty portrayal of villainous Karram Khan Power's old childhood friend and subsequent mortal enemy enlivens the film's latter stages). The crew members fare little better, alas: Henry King may have been nominated for a DGA but you would hardly guess it from watching the film; composer Bernard Herrmann does get to slip in a few worthwhile musical passages but the overall score is not up to his usual high standards; Leon Shamroy's Widescreen color cinematography was doubtless spectacular on the big screen but, hampered by the compromised video version I watched, it still was not enough to elevate the film for me. For the record, around the same time I acquired KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES, John Ford's obscure, earlier film version of the story entitled THE BLACK WATCH (1929), with Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy, also came my way but, having a ton of the director's movies in my vast collection still unwatched, I will leave that viewing for when I eventually tackle the lot!
Review of King of the Khyber Rifles
