The Light at the Edge of the WorldOne of the most bizarre movies I’ve seen in quite some time. It’s based on a Jules Verne novel, has a stellar cast and several spaghetti western regulars in supporting roles, it was shot in Spain and is sadistically violent. The story is about three lighthouse keepers, stationed on a remote island off the southern tip of Argentina. The island is visited by pirates, who destroy the lighthouse and kill two of the keepers. The third one (played by Kirk Douglas) escapes, starting a guerilla war against the cutthroats, led by the megalomaniac pirate Kongre (Yul Brynner himself). The plan of the pirates: mislead ships onto the rocks, so they can kill the passengers and steal their valuables ... Verne based his story on real-life lighthouses in the near Tierra de Fuego and Cape Horn. They were often kept by people seeking isolation, for one reason or another. Douglas’ character Denton has a broken heart and is also trying to escape punishment for shooting a man during the California Gold rush. His troubled past is illustrated in a couple of flashbacks. With Aldo Sambrell, Victor Israel and Tito Garcia among the pirates, the spaghetti western factor is high. And yes, the film ends with a duel, but not in a town street, but in and around the lighthouse. With the name Jules Verne in mind, censors must have thought the film would be popular among teenagers, so they cut more than ten minutes of nastiness in order to give it a PG rating. A voice over by Sean Connery was added to help viewers keeping track of things. As a result the movie was pulvarized by critics, who thought it was a ridiculously edited mess. In recent years a couple of (nearly) uncut versions have popped up, with running times of a little over two hours. Some of them still have the Connery voice over, the version I watched (running 128 minutes) didn’t. If the cut version was a mess, the (nearly) uncut version is still far from being perfect. The first half, with the arrival of the pirates and Douglas’ sabotage works has a few tremendously suspenseful moments, but in the second half we arrive in murky waters. Brynner (quite convincing as a pirate) decides not to kill one of the victims of a stranded ship live, the beautiful Samatha Eggar. Usually the presence of Eggar is an asset, but in this case she’s the reason of all kind of complications (Douglas thinks she’s his long lost love, etc.). The film slows down considerably and crumbles towards a unconvincing finale. It also suffers from a few clumsy special effects involving dummies and miniature ships. As for the violence: it’s quite gruesome, especially a torture scene towards the end.
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