And what better place to set this steamy tale but in a steamy native village in the 1939 Belgian Congo......reproduced almost entirely on a Warner Brothers soundstage and populated with a stellar line-up of every prominent black supporting actor of the era (Woody Strode, Juano Hernandez, Errol John, Scatman Crothers, Rafer Johnson).
The sweet 'n gorgeous Angie Dickinson plays the sweet 'n gorgeous Rachel Cade, a committed missionary nurse filled with righteous fervor about bringing both modern medicine and Christianity to the natives.......who worship a perpetually pissed off deity who hangs out in a mountain overlooking their huts.
Angie's got her hands full in every way......as soon as she arrives at the makeshift village hospital, the doc in charge promptly drops dead of a coronary (an all too brief role for Douglas Spencer, the guy who screamed "Keep watching the skies!" at the end of "The Thing")
To further complicate her life, the cynical, atheistic Belgian military administrator (Peter Finch) has the hots for her. As if that isn't enough, literally dropping from the sky in a crashed plane comes a dashing young Boston doctor enlisted in the RAF (the impossibly dashing young Roger Moore)....
Guess what.......dashing young Doc also develops the hots for temperature-takin', bible-thumpin' Angie......
Before long, artfully arranged droplets of sweat appear on Nurse Angie's brow........not from the Congo heat, but....oh, heavens.....from sexual arousal. Ditching her True Believer
status, she finally succumbs and allows Roger to roger her roundly........leaving her....gasp.....pregnant.
The noble, unloved, self-sacrificing Finch offers to marry Angie after a clueless Roger flies off to rejoin the war.......even if Angie only holds semi-warm feelings for Finch, he's still willing to help her stave off the expected scandal and humiliation of a white baby popping out of her in the middle of an African village. What a guy.
You've figured out by now that we didn't take any of this film too seriously, but that doesn't mean we didn't have a hoot and a half enjoying it. Finch, Dickinson and Moore make for an intriguing, charismatic romantic triangle........you definitely want to hang on til the end to see who ends up with who.....and as a bonus, it unfolds over a typically lush, insistent Max Steiner music score.....and with the exception of a few establishing shots, never leaves the obvious theatrical confines to that African-decorated Warner Brothers stage.
The BQ much prefers this warmer, kinder, 1960's view of an Evangelical woman.....as opposed to some of today's real life southern fried Evangelicals who've used their bibles to find loopholes to excuse pedophilia and sexual assault.......we forgive Rachel Cade her sins and pray for her to get 2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2).....after all, it was a hot night, no radio or TV to watch.....and she had young Roger Moore all to herself......you do the math.....
No comments:
Post a Comment