Bengazi
Bengazi
NR | 14 September 1955 (USA)
Bengazi Trailers

An American with a shady past joins with a morally-bankrupt Irishman to find treasure buried by Arabs in a deserted mosque in the Sahara. The situation becomes complicated when they are surrounded by Bedouin bandits.

Reviews
SpecialsTarget Disturbing yet enthralling
AnhartLinkin This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.
InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.
Freeman This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
ksf-2 Minor Spoilers *** Filmed in SUPERSCOPE, according to the opening credits! definition and history at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 Richard Conte and Victor McLaglen were pretty big stars, for their day.... McLaglen had won the Oscar for "The Informer" waaaay back in 1935. Here, Gillmore (Conte) and Donovan (McLaglen) team up to find the buried gold in the desert hills of Libya. After snitching a truck, the group, including Donovan's daughter (Mala Powers) end up in the middle of Libya to find the buried gold... "somewhere" in the desert. A plot-hole for me was the time and expense the army spent on looking for a stolen truck, out in a huge desert. and did no-one try to talk the daughter out of heading into the desert, where they might be locating and removing stolen gold? I guess the policeman Levering wanted to follow her to see where dad had gone to. maybe he thought she would be able to talk her dad out of causing more harm ? anyway...moving on. Some scenes were filmed in the deserts of Yuma and around the Salton Sea, California. The ending was almost a little too "fairy-tale-ish"... i wondered if the book ended the same way, or had been made more viewer-friendly for the audiences at the time. What we end up with seems a little unlikely... but whatever. This 1955 version does not seem to be at all related to the Italian, 1942 film "Bengasi". Directed by John Brahm, who had worked extensively with Hitchcock. Bengazi is pretty good. Only 4.9 rating on IMDb, but that's after about a hundred votes so far. It must have been pretty exotic for the viewer to think maybe they were seeing the real deserts of Libya.
kapelusznik18 ***SPOILERS*** Boring and sleep addicting film that has you struggle to stay awake to see it through to it's final and totally mind numbing conclusion. It, the film "Benghazi", has something to do with buried gold in the middle of the Libyan Desert that it's rightful owners a local Bedouin tribe seemed to have totally forgotten about. That's until some 10 years later when the just released from prison Selby, Richard Erdman, together with American far away from home, Buffalo NY, John Gillmore, Richard Conte with and without his shirt on, put their heads together and planned to recover it. It was Selby while a member of the British 8th Army in WWII in Libya who had stolen the gold from the Bedouin tribe and buried it a an abandoned and bombed out Mosque. Now together the two plan to grab the gold and check out of the country and start better lives for themselves playing craps & black jack on the gambling tables in Moneco.There's also the Irish bar owner Robert Emmett "Wild Bill" Donovan, Victor McLaglen, who's been estranged from his wife and daughter for some 15 years. It's when his daughter Aileen, Maia Powers, while on a pleasure cruse in the Mediterranean check into town that things started getting a bit serious between the cast of characters in the movie. Papa Bill got very guilt ridden in what he did by leaving both wife and daughter out in the cold and Aileen got very serious with American fortune hunter, for the Beouin gold, Gillmore and the top cop in town Insp. Levering, a Scotsman no less, played by the murdering his Scottish accent Richard Carson got very interested in what Gillmore & Selby were up to as well. That while he was as getting romantically interested in Aileen Donovan!***SPOILERS*** movie limped along to it's final conclusion with the cast trapped in the desert Masque surrounded by some 50 Bedouin tribesmen intent on massacring them. In the end the gold digging, who in fact dug the hidden gold up, Gillmore came to his senses after being shot and decided to return the gold to it's rightful owners the Bedouin tribesmen. Thus allowing everyone still alive in the Mosque to go free. The big surprise in the movie is why the Bedouin tribesmen didn't just ask Gillmore & Co. to return the gold to them in the first place! Since being surrounded with no hope of being rescued what choice did they have and what else could they have possibly done!
atlasmb Our protagonists meet at a gin joint located in North Africa. With some jaunty piano music playing in the background, they trade lines. It might remind you of another film starring Bogie.The local police authority tries to intervene in the plot, working from his noirish office, where a desk fan casts long shadows.The female lead, played by Mala Powers, sports an accent and some resemblance to Ingrid Bergman.Eventually, the action moves from its Casablanca-like setting to the middle of the vast desert, where an old mosque is being swallowed by the sands next to a small oasis. It's treasure they seek.Greed drives this vehicle about selfishness and sacrifice and what might even be love. The "action", if we can call it that, is sparse. The actors are less than compelling. And the plot of this second feature offers no one you might consider a hero.
bkoganbing If you can accept the fact that Victor McLaglen is running an Irish Pub in Bengazi, Libya during the post World War II years, you'll swallow anything. Other than the fact that alcohol is forbidden to Moslems, I'm sure he's doing a great business.He and Richard Conte hear of a proposition from escaped convict Richard Erdman about some treasure buried in a mosque in the middle of the desert, they take off looking for it. Of course at the same time, Scottish police inspector Richard Carlson and McLaglen's daughter Mala Powers also go looking for them.They all wind up with a lot of angry Bedouins shooting at them. I mean they are trying to rob the tribe. How rude of the Bedouins to object.Bengazi played the bottom half of double bills when it came out and I'm sure the audience was praying for the main feature to start.