The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)

Too much of everything

A Major Disappointment

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Even with the enormous eye candy of Kirk Douglas and Yul Brynner in a pirate movie together, The Light at the Edge of the World isn't very entertaining. Kirk is the lighthouse keeper, content in his solitude, and Yul is the leader of a band of pirates who specialize in taking control of lighthouses and crashing ships. This is very much a "man's movie", as there's only one woman in the film, Samantha Eggar, and she isn't treated very nicely when Yul takes her prisoner. Yes, I know, if Yul Brynner took me prisoner, I wouldn't complain about it either, but trust me, in this movie he's a real bad guy!There's lots of action scenes, and tension-filled violence, but not very much of a story. Dudes who like macho movies with senseless fighting between two macho dudes might like this one, especially since it's strongly implied that Samantha Eggar gets passed around the pirates during her capture. For normal men, or any women at all, you'll want to pass on this movie. Rent The King and I and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea instead.

The Light at the Edge of the WorldLighthouses are the best places for troubled loners because they have all the comforts of a clock tower.However, university students aren't the targets in this action movie, pirates are.Fleeing from a failed romance and a murder rap back in the States, ex-miner Denton (Kirk Douglas) heads down south to Cape Horn in 1865 to man a lighthouse.When Kongre (Yul Brynner) and his marauders land on the coastline intent on wrecking ships by dowsing the flame, it's up to Denton and his skeleton crew (Massimo Ranieri, Fernando Rey) to abate the cutthroats and liberate their female captive (Samantha Eggar) before the next cargo ship arrives.Noted for its Spanish locales, particularly the craggy topography where the swashbuckling occurs, this adaptation of Jules Verne's novel is a forgotten gem in the adventure genre. Nevertheless, it must be nice to get a visitor at the lighthouse that isn't a moth.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

Having fond memories of watching this as a kid, being one of the first VHS I had gotten hold of (in the mid-1980s), I guess I'm more partial to it than would have otherwise been the case; a measure of my impatience to revisit this over the years is my having recorded it off of Italian TV, almost acquiring it as DivX and eventually coming across a copy of the Image DVD within the space of a week! Even so, reviewing the film now with an adult perspective clearly exposes its essentially flawed nature.This was a typical (and typically misguided) international venture of the time, adapted from an obscure Jules Verne tale and roping in Hollywood veterans – Kirk Douglas (who even produced!) and Yul Brynner – in an effort to drum up sufficient box-office receipts (this was yet another effort by the Salkinds, who were responsible for SANTA CLAUS[1985], another very recent re-acquaintance: by the way, I've just recorded off Italian TV, dubbed and regrettably panned-and-scanned, their star-studded version of Mark Twain's THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER [1977]). Anyway, the film's thin plot of a lighthouse keeper (Douglas, still athletic at 55) combating a band of pirates led by a bored-looking Brynner is stretched for a hefty and slow-moving 129 minutes (which is 9 longer than the official duration given on most sources!). Even if I hadn't checked this out in 20 years or so, I still recalled some of the imagery involved – such as Douglas hanging upside down from the lighthouse tower, or his showdown with Brynner (which ends in a fire)…to say nothing of those indelible (and unmistakably European) faces, some of whom I've come to know by name in the interim, of Brynner's sinister cutthroat cohorts.The rest of the cast includes Samantha Eggar (ill-at-ease as a shipwreck victim who unwittingly becomes an object of contention between the two male stars: a sure indication of how perfunctory the role was to begin with is that she's ultimately raped and murdered, with not even the hero bothering to do anything about it!), Renato Salvatori (as another survivor who befriends Douglas but, when finally caught by Brynner and his men, is painfully skinned alive!), as well as Fernando Rey and popular Italian crooner Massimo Ranieri – both of whose contribution is brief, being literally done away with as soon as the villains make their first appearance! While the film's tolerable enough as lowbrow epic adventures go, one can't really call it entertaining in view of the seediness and sadism on display; that said, the thing does become unintentionally hilarious with the clichéd flashbacks to Douglas' past as a gold-digger in the Old West, and especially the accidental slipping (almost at the cost of his life) of Brynner's wild-eyed, long-haired, right-hand man when engaged in an impromptu campy dance in drag!

As a young boy, I fell asleep at the drive-in while this movie was playing. It was part of a twin bill with "Twilight People", a very cheaply made version of "The Island of Dr Moreau". I had nightmares for years afterward. It wasn't because either of these movies were particularly scary--they weren't. I was mortified by how bad the acting, plot, & the writing were. It had something to do with pirates using a lighthouse to crash ships so that they could steal their treasure. Kirk Douglas was one of the people that lived on the island with the lighthouse. He had a monkey and hid in a cave on the edge of the cliff which conveniently had a hole in the floor. Gee, I wonder how that might fit into the film? When I say I had nightmares about this movie, I mean literally. It was not until I found it and "Twilight People" on video and relived the horror of these 2 awful films that the dreams ceased.