Victor Mature puts on a turban and grows a beard to star as the title character in Zarak. It's the story of the eldest son of a clan chief who betrays his father with the father's youngest bride played by the Swedish Anita Ekberg. Just another case of an obviously Cauacasian woman playing an exotic Oriental and just by looks not carrying it off too well. Still she does what she can, Maureen O'Hara knew best of all how Anita felt cast in something like Zarak.After being banished from the tribe, Mature becomes a bandit chief and the scourge of the territory in what is now Pakistan. Michael Wilding is sent to bring in Mature dead or alive, but other tribes are starting to get restless.It maybe set in what was the real India then, but Zarak plays like an eastern western. Finlay Currie plays a mullah who pops in and out of the film at critical points in our protagonist's life. He's quite the saintly figure, more like a Christian saint than a Moslem one.All in all a routine action film that fans of Victor Mature will appreciate.

This desert-set adventure flick exemplifies the subtle difference between Hokum and Camp: recently, I had watched its star, Victor Mature, in THE VEILS OF BAGDAD (1953) – spirited, tongue-in-cheek and generally exuding an air of unpretentious low-budget professionalism, it falls firmly into the former category; ZARAK, on the other hand, tries to be serious (with its religious/political undertones and calling into question familial/patriotic loyalties at times of stress) but is so relentlessly high-strung as to emerge a fount of virtually uninterrupted (but clearly unintended) hilarity! These are too numerous to cite and most have, in any case already subsided in my memory, but I can't fail to mention Mature's irrepressible resourcefulness – though very obviously doubled at times – when aroused (including high-kicking his opponents and vigorously hacking away at a rope-bridge on which his arch-nemesis Michael Wilding is hanging for dear life), stoicism in the face of torture and impending death and, particularly, his wallowing in self-pity (and hysterically funny subsequent haunting) after unwittingly bludgeoning to death the current Mullah of the mosque – who had actually interceded for Mature during a public flogging and does the same, much to the latter's evident chagrin, for the British Major at the aforementioned bridge sequence! That is not to say ZARAK is a bad film in the strict sense of the word: for one thing, there's plenty of action throughout (some of it actually borrowed from the classic Alexander Korda production of THE FOUR FEATHERS [1939]!) – but, to be sure, the narrative is inordinately muddled for this type of film (not only in delineating the plot or the hero's motivations, but also by having such a prominent character as that of Bernard Miles vanish altogether halfway through)! This was the second of six British-made actioners featuring Hollywood hunk Mature, filmed virtually back-to-back and after which his career would slowly grind to a stand-still; for the record, the others – none of which I've watched – were SAFARI (1956), INTERPOL (1957; also with co-star Anita Ekberg), THE LONG HAUL (1957), NO TIME TO DIE (1958) and the somewhat similar THE BANDIT OF ZHOBE (1959; actually directed by the co-story writer of this one, John Gilling). Sexy in scantily-clad attire, Ekberg even gets to perform a sultry exotic dance but is otherwise underused here; Wilding is as ineffectual playing the stiff-upper-lipped cavalry officer after Mature as the latter is wooden in Afghan tinge and garb(!), Miles appears as the star's one-eyed comic relief sidekick (at one point drooling over the heroine's writhing and to which he's vainly attempting to draw his brooding partner's attention), while Finlay Currie is – what else? – the earnest but ill-fated Holy Man. Apart from these, the supporting cast includes: Bonar Colleano (as one of Zarak's treacherous younger siblings), Frederick Valk (in his last role as his tyrannical father), Eunice Gayson (best-known for first eliciting the celebrated trademark response of "Bond, James Bond" – in DR. NO [1962], of course – is here Wilding's ingenuous bride) and Patrick McGoohan (youthful but already imposing in what is presumably his first sizeable part in a film as Wilding's aide). The behind-the-scenes credits are similarly notable – several of whom would soon prove instrumental in cementing the 007 image into the public consciousness.

In 1956 I was a twelve year old girl, going to the Saturday Matinée with my friends. The things I remember best about Zarak were the marvelous colors of the costumes, the romantic plot line and the desert fighting. It was both a Swash and a Buckle, and made even more exciting by its exotic location. Victor Mature was a bit long in the tooth, and probably could have played the father instead of the son, but he was still in good enough shape for my twelve year old heart to side with the errant lovers. Anita Ekburg didn't actually act much, but she was spectacular---in living color and almost in the costumes. In comparison to Victor Matures' be-robed macho, Michael Wilding seemed a bit of a stuffed shirt, leading most twelve year old girls to decide that Arabs were much sexier than Englishmen!

They don't make 'em like this anymore, and more's the pity. It's hokey, contrived, politically incorrect, and laced with clichés, but it blissfully transports one back to that innocent, popcorn-scented time in the balcony of the local Bijou when Technicolor images flickering across a silver screen could sweep one into a magical world of harem girls and charging horsemen.Structurally, the film is a bit of a mess, stitching together a forbidden romance between star-crossed lovers, a stiff-upper-lip adventure about civilized British soldiers subduing pagan hordes, and a personal drama about the growing respect between two enemy combatants. While the plot is a mishmash, however, it's never dull, it moves along at a merry clip, and it fills the CinemaScope screen with lively, colorful, filmed-in-Morocco images.Michael Wilding and Patrick McGoohan are properly British, Anita Ekberg never looked more glamorous, and Victor Mature was born to play just this sort of thing. Lean back, set your brain at "Idle," and enjoy!(Incidentally, Victor Mature is flogged twice in this movie. The one which occurs in the first reel is especially vivid and it ranks 52nd on a list published in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies.")