![]() This was now the fourth consecutive Louis Hayward-Patricia Medina pairing in two years and the third to be directed by Ralph Murphy although the latter's first relevant effort, THE LADY AND THE BANDIT (1951) is easily the weakest of the quintet I have just watched, the stars must have hit it off with him since they retained his services in such quick succession and, in retrospect, improved on the end product with each reunion. ![]() ![]() I will say at the outset that the copy I landed was not only the most battered of the five but, worse still, that it was sourced from a black-and-white print when the film was originally released in a Cinecolor process dubbed "Naturalcolor"!! For the record, this odd practice is not as rare as one would think: I do recall a few occasions where films were broadcast on TV shorn of colour - one such example being Raffaello Matarazzo's epic THE SHIP OF CONDEMNED WOMEN (1953).which I own but have yet to upgrade to its official version, even if it was made available eventually! Nevertheless, I am not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and, thankfully, I only realized the discrepancy after the fact so that my enjoyment was not marred by foreknowledge. When I started on this mini-Louis Hayward retrospective, I bemoaned the fact that the film under review was unavailable to me for assessment (at this point, I am now left with only THE ROYAL African RIFLES to catch up with from amongst the star's adventure outings) well, four days later, here I am writing about it! Blame it on the limitless, rapid-fire 21st century technology. ![]()
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