Escape from Zahrain * (1962, Yul Brynner, Sal Mineo, Jack Warden, Madlyn Rhue, Anthony Caruso) – Classic Movie Review 9858

Director Ronald Neame’s 1962 Escape from Zahrain is escapist adventure nonsense in which Sharif (Yul Brynner), an Arabian captured rebel leader, is freed by young revolutionaries and flees from the law from the fictitious Arab country of Zahrain in a hijacked ambulance across the desert with four fellow fugitives.

The movie seems long (even at 93 minutes) and sluggish, but there is some good action, and Brynner, Sal Mineo, as a student leader called Ahmed, and Jack Warden, as an American criminal called Huston, the desert scenery and Technicolor camerawork help. James Mason’s appearance is a mere walk-on as a mechanic called Johnson.

Yul Brynner is good, though he is always basically the same in everything, and in his continuing stardom is a slight puzzle. Alas Mineo’s promising career never developed into him becoming a true star.

Also in the cast are Madlyn Rhue, Anthony Caruso, Jay Novello, Leonard Strong, Joseph Ruskin, Vladimir Sokoloff, Claudia Barrett and Mario Gallo.

Robin Estridge’s screenplay is based on Michael Barrett’s novel.

Mineo had spent three years on Broadway with Brynner in The King and I.

The Paramount Pictures production was shot not in the Middle East but in the Mojave Desert, California, and at Barstow, California.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 9858

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