Zarak (1956)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

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.

Having adopted the name of Patrick McGoohan's character as my web ID, I'd almost avoided obtaining a copy of this movie, on the grounds that if it was truly awful and McGoohan's part poor, then I would feel a bit of a fool (Quiet at the back!). Thankfully I can be proud to perpetuate the name: Moor Larkin! Some while ago I bought a copy of 'Zarak Khan', by AJ Bevan. It is possibly one of the strangest books I've ever read. Zarak is a man, born in the most savage of societies. The savagery isn't primitivism, but stems from the strange morality that is deemed to have developed on the 'North West Frontier' of the Indian sub-continent. The book was fore-worded by General Slim, so was no morbid piece of sensationalism. Zarak betrays and is betrayed by not almost, but every, single other character, in the story. Written in 1949, it evidently had some popularity. Read in 2007, I can only attribute that popularity to the recognition of the nihilistic randomness that had so recently afflicted the people of Britain during WWII. The book appears to make no sense from the viewpoint of late 20th Century Western social conscience. Set as it is, essentially in Afghanistan, there is a resonance again however in the 21st Century, as the randomness of reborn violence once again seems inescapable.So much for the background. What of the film? The production team that would so soon be responsible for the James Bond Franchise set about the job of making Zarak a 'Cinemascope Spectacular'. Indian subjects of the Raj are the bulk of the Redcoats forming rife-volleying ranks, reminiscent of the African-based 'Zulu', but in Zarak they form triple, rather than double ranks: one lying, one kneeling, one standing. Tribal horsemen crash to the ground in a hail of Lee-Enfield bullets. Michael Wilding is a political officer, trying to persuade the locals of the benefits of British rule. Most of them seem convinced. Moor Larkin, played by Patrick McGoohan has fewer illusions. "Burn their villages and fine their men" he advises Wilding's Major Ingram. Death and money are all the locals respond to, so far as Moor Larkin is concerned.Zarak, played by Victor Mature, seems to be proof that Larkin knows what he is talking about. Zarak doesn't dislike anyone. He doesn't care about anyone. That is the point! He has no feelings either way. Zarak is Zarak. That is enough. If Zarak needs to love, he loves. If Zarak needs to eat, he eats. If Zarak needs money, he takes it from whoever has it. If Zarak needs to kill, he kills. Zarak doesn't do any of this for a reason. He seeks no power. A natural tribal leader, with more ferocity than any of his peers, he has no wish to lead. He uses followers to achieve his goals and then moves on.The film follows the battles, both military and those of the will, between Zarak and the British authorities. McGoohans' Larkin leads the forces as he attempts to preserve the life of the wishful-thinking Political officer, and achieve the capture of the outlaw, Zarak.Zarak is given a lover in the film. The introduction of Anita Ekberg was possibly the box-office life of the movie, but it's artistic death. Eunice Gayson pops in as the love interest for Major Ingram, the political officer. Her role is quite useful and makes a lot more sense than Ms. Ekberg; not that that was Ms. Ekberg's fault: if the producers dress her in wispy silk and make her gyrate at key moments of the movie, she can hardly be taken very seriously by anyone, I suppose. In a similar way this difficult story becomes enmeshed in military spectacle. If you just watch the film, you'll enjoy parts of it, but be confused by the whole. If you read the book and then watch the film, you can read between the frames and notice that Victor Mature actually does quite a good job, as does Patrick Mcgoohan. I suspect that they might both have been greatly disappointed when they saw the finished movie. Victor Mature probably laughed and chalked it up as another example of the mad movie-world he was so familiar with. Patrick McGoohan possibly took things a lot more seriously and was so ticked off with the directors/producers that he refused to get involved with them again, when they came up with some secret agent nonsense in 1960. No, he famously said. Doctor No, they said.At the end of the movie, Zarak has given his life for Ingram. Moor Larkin explains that "Zarak hated the world. He gave his life, merely to show his contempt for that world and everyone in it". Ingram mumbles something about "Greater love hath no man, than he gives his life for an enemy". Moor Larkin probably got closest to the truth.

saw this movie at ganesha talkies in mysore,india(1957). was a big fan of victor mature those days.i think it was a big hit in india.in my opinion this movie was much better than the spielberg creations like(the raiders series).

It's interesting sitting down to write a review on a film you have only seen once - some forty five years ago! Just ten years old, perhaps on account of the striking name (ZARAK - how onomatopoeic? - better look that one up!) I have remembered the film clearly...perhaps Anita Ekberg was an early awakening for me?Victor Mature done up like bin Laden on a bad day, played the title role with gusto, the middle eastern outlaw, on the run from terribly British Michael Wilding as Major Ingram. He derring-do's with the best of them! This type of desert adventure was all the rage in the 50's, another biggie of its day as I recall, Tyrone Power in KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES!...but I digress!Probably most men in the audience (and I was inarguably male, even at that stage) will doubtless remember Ms Ekberg as Zarak's forbidden love Salma, rather inconveniently one of his father's wives. Unless I am mistaken, I seem to recall Zarak pacing around his exotic garden while Ms Ekberg, barely legally silked-up, was sashaying around him teasingly, singing "Climb up the Garden Wall," God, I'd like to see that again!So yeah, take it from a ten year old, this was a film that went off!