That old throwback, a bunch of hard bitten men in some desolate outpost (here a mining station in Saharan Africa... I wasn't sure what country) who are thrown into turmoil when a sexy dame turns up in the form of Carroll Baker. This was based on a play and you can tell - the men never seem to do any work (which would have made things seem more cinematic and the scenes more visually interesting) but mostly sit around, sweat and be nasty to each other.
The main problem with this is it goes on too long - the subplot about Denholm Elliott selling one of his letters to Ian Bannen starts off well but drags. Carroll Baker flounces about and is good looking but plays it too obviously sexy, eating fruit provocatively and wearing towels and the like. Peter Van Eyck and Harsjorg Felmy always look as though they're about to do something interesting but it never happens. Every character's back story is hinted at but never really explored. Every scene felt as though it could have done with a tighten.
Ian Bannen plays, hammily, a drunken Scott called Fletcher who has seemingly been to Australia (there's reference to Bondi Beach). Felmy is smug and superior as a mystery man German who seems as if he's going to be set up as the hero (he has this self-contained air of competence about him) but in the end he doesn't do much. Peter Van Eyck runs the operation and gets to bang Carroll Baker; Mario Adorf is a taciturn Spaniard. There's also a black delivery driver (Henry Baird) and a scene where the men look at a topless photo spread and the woman in question was actually topless, which gave me a bit of a jolt. It felt horribly misogynistic with Baker getting the boys hot under the collar and her husband stabbing her to death. (Another problem with the movie - if Baker was going to be killed then why not get one of "our people" to do it instead of a visitor like Baker's husband?)
The movie was directed by Seth Holt, who has a bit of a cult horror reputation based on The Nanny and Scream of Fear; the movie always looks good, and the use of sound is effective, but really this isn't much of a film.
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