The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)

A lot more amusing than I thought it would be.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Blistering performances.

1939's "The Rains Came". Turner plays the predatory Lady Esketh, Burton the saintly Dr. Safti, Michael Rennie is Lord Esketh, while Fred MacMurray seems to have wandered away from the set of "My Three Sons" years before it began. He's not convincing as an alcoholic, and seems entirely too nice for this bunch of people.While I was waiting for/watching the Oscar nominated Special Effects sequence(s), I noticed that- Turner gives one of her better late performances; Eugenie Leontovich's Maharani combines a Russian and British accent and sounds remarkably weird; when a character is told not to do something, they go ahead and ignore the advice (applies to five characters). Burton is very brown when his character is introduced; when the rains start, his makeup starts to come off, and after he's been submerged in a flooding river, he's almost as white as Lana Turner. In the films' last twenty minutes, the brown makeup doesn't reappear. Instead Burton just wears more mascara than Turner. Things were already falling apart a bit at Fox and mogul Darryl F. Zanuck hadn't even left for Europe yet.The earthquake/flood/fire sequence is worth waiting for in spite of all of this. The Special Effects by Ray Kellogg were worth the Oscar nomination. To have seen the sequence in Cinerama must have been an experience.

As a youngster, if we wanted to see a movie (about the only entertainment in town) we were forced to go to a local theater that showed movies that were long past their original runs. If it were 2016, a group of teenagers wouldn't have considered seeing this movie. It was dramatic and about people tearing each other apart. There were no guns or secret agents or comedic pratfalls. But it was Friday night and..... I have always been a fairly accepting person when it comes to the arts. As it turns out, this movie was a challenge to the adult population. It is an array of the most unlikable characters who have the most condescending attitudes toward the people they were living with. That is imperial India. It meanders and meanders and never gets to the point. Burton looks good as does Lana Turner. Unfortunately, Turner's character is utterly despicable. This is one that can fade into the past.

Lana Turner is at it again; this time as still another selfish woman, who while married to Michael Rennie in this 1955 film, throws men off by merely writing out a check to them.In a loveless marriage to Rennie, she goes with him to Ranchipur for him to buy a stallion. There she meets old flame Fred MacMurray, an alcoholic engineer, but the love of her life appears-an Indian doctor played by Richard Burton.Easily, the best part of the picture was the earthquake scenes. They rivaled, if not better than those of the film "San Francisco." (1936)The film becomes one of devotion and duty and hopefully this will set the Turner character straight. Nothing as an emergency to make you realize life's values and commitments.

If you think watching LANA TURNER's attraction to the first man in a turban she's ever seen (RICHARD BURTON) is slightly humorous, wait till you see and hear FRED MacMURRAY and JOAN CAULFIELD reciting some dreary, sappy dialogue as the second lead love interests in another re-working of Luis Bromfield's tale about passion among some folk in India.It's a tale that doesn't get any better in this more lavish remake of "The Rains Came". The story is the kind that you follow only to wish impatiently that the floods will arrive to make your patience with the acting, direction and script worthwhile.Lana, of course, is a dream in Technicolored outfits, as a spoiled rich woman who dislikes her husband (MICHAEL RENNIE) because she suspects he only married her for her wealth. She therefore feels compelled to cheat on him with the first handsome man she spots after their arrival in India. It's typical Lana material and she does it so convincingly that you almost forgive her for some of the things she says and does.The climax is well staged and worth a view, especially as seen on the wide screen in all of its CinemaScope glory. But getting there is a tiresome thing indeed.