Terminus 13 Sahara
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Terminus 13 Sahara |
| Original title | Stop Six-Sahara / Terminus 13 Sahara |
| Country of production | United Kingdom of Germany |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1963 |
| length | 100 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Seth Holt |
| script |
Bryan Forbes Brian Clemens |
| production |
Artur Brauner Gene Gutowski |
| music | Ron Grainer |
| camera | Gerald Gibbs |
| cut | Alastair McIntyre |
| occupation | |
| |
Endstation 13 Sahara is a German-British adventure film from 1962 with Carroll Baker and Peter van Eyck in the leading roles.
action
The German Martin is picked up in a small town on the edge of the Sahara and taken from there to a small pumping station in the desert, where he is supposed to work for a US oil company. The truck also transports the coffin with which Martin's predecessor, who apparently died in oil drilling, is to be transported away. Martin has also signed up for five years, as have the other four men at the remote drilling rig. The company is run by the authoritarian and determined Kramer, a willing, disaffected American with German roots. The disciplined and taciturn Martin soon clashes with him. The other men are very different: there is the noisy Fletcher who likes to knock obscene slogans, a Scot, and the absolute opposite of him, the English ex-major Macey, a bit buttoned up and uptight and quite snooty. The coarse Spaniard Santos, on the other hand, only cares about his work, he doesn't think much of entertainment.
This work turns out to be very monotonous, the heat, the dust and the boredom make the tough guys here at the end of the world to create. They do have a few local workers available as servants, but beyond that, camp life offers no comfort or variety, apart from the nightly poker games that Kramer forces the men to play against their will. Only a few prostitutes come to visit at longer intervals. Then one day, however, Catherine shows up in a road cruiser, the epitome of all femininity: a blonde temptation as it is in the book. Catherine sits at the side of her ex-husband Jimmy in a Cadillac cabriolet that he drives with suicidal intent and drives him through the camp before he crashes the car into a wall. While the crazy driver is pulled out of the car, seriously injured, the femme fatale has not received a single scratch. From the beginning, Catherine exudes her sex appeal in every direction and gradually makes even the most controlled men pissed off. With hormones and testosterone so boiling in the heat, one day disaster will inevitably occur.
Production notes
Terminus 13 Sahara was shot between May 17 and July 18, 1962 in the Sahara near Tripoli in Libya (exterior shots). The studio scenes were filmed in Shepperton Studios near London. The film ran on January 11, 1963 in several German cinemas.
This film is one of Artur Brauner's two attempts to set up a continuous German-British film cooperation in 1962. Before that, in the same year he had A Dead Looking for His Murderer filmed, also with Peter van Eyck in a leading role. After terminus 13 Sahara , Brauner ended this venture again.
Ron Grainer conducted his own composition. Jack Stephens was responsible for the building designs.
The opening sequence of the film, a remake of the French film “ SOS Sahara ” made in 1938 , is strongly reminiscent of Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic Wages of Fear .
Reviews
“The topic is basically banal: five men on an abandoned oil station in the desert are driven crazy with sex by a luxury blonde who suddenly appears. This shorthand plot, however, suppresses the essentials: the desolation of the scorching wasteland and the contrast between the characters make up the content of the German-English film. How a newcomer to the small crew gets involved in a test of strength with the arrogant boss, how a macabre mail business is concluded; that is psychological and tightens the atmosphere. Only when the woman arouses desire does the action become 'ordinary'. To praise the fit of the solid dialogues, the photography and the actors, above all Ian Bannen, then Denholm Elliott, Biff McGuire, Hansjörg Felmy, Peter van Eyck, Mario Adorf. The alluring depravity: Carroll Baker. "
In Films 1962/64 the following can be read: "Realistically tough in style, implausible in action and ethically devoid of point of view."
The lexicon of the international film says: "It is not without skill that the realistic stylistic devices of the director distract from the unbelievable nature of the desert adventure."
“With all due respect to the all too visible charm of Carroll Baker as the ephemeral seductress who ruins a small oil drilling outstation, 'Station Six — Sahara' would be better off without her. (…) In fact, for the first half hour or so there are very real opportunities for this British melodrama as a cynical, caustic close-up of desert boredom and unleashed, insignificant friction. (...) When Miss Baker appears in a random car accident, the boys immediately start chasing after her. (…) What began as a murderous irony turns into a steamy farce that could hardly be more meaningful. The purring Miss Baker seems to feel perfectly at home in no man's land, but she also manages to seduce the whole film. "
Web links
- Terminus 13 Sahara in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Terminal 13 Sahara at filmportal.de
- full film review in the New York Times
- End stop 13 Sahara in the synchronous database
Individual evidence
- ^ Films 1962/64. Critical notes from three years of cinema and television. Handbook VII of the Catholic film criticism. Düsseldorf 1965, p. 202
- ↑ Terminal 13 Sahara. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 10, 2015 .