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.

***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!

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.

In the first few minutes Bengazi earns a weak 4 rating and then gets worse.Richard Conte looks for gold in a desert and ends up finding that happiness is in his own back yard.On the way he meets characters suffering from improbable Scotch and Irish accents.Another of his difficulties is that, in a ruined building, he is being attacked by a band of desert nomads.He drives them off by firing a machine gun into the darkness of the night.Fortunately these nomads are not very smart (They attack the building on one side only - The side with the machine gun). Mini-spoiler coming: Warning to all minor characters - Never ever say what you want done with your body if you die. If you do so you will be dead before the end of the reel. A generous 2 rating.