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.
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