Bengal Brigade [Bengal Rifles] ** (1954, Rock Hudson, Arlene Dahl, Ursula Thiess, Dan O’Herlihy, Torin Thatcher, Arnold Moss) – Classic Movie Review 10,658

‘From marble palace to teeming jungle all India rocked with the violence of the great rebellion!’

Director Laslo Benedek’s 1954 Bengal Brigade [Bengal Rifles] stars Rock Hudson, who struggles against his unwise casting in a part beyond his range as Captain Jeffrey Claybourne, a British officer masquerading as a traitor and plotting by stealth against the Rajah Karam (Arnold Moss) who wants to boot the Brits out of Victorian India.

Universal International Pictures’s naive costume-action hokum is often funny and absurd rather than thrilling as intended. But our hero, the heroine Arlene Dahl and the picture look handsome in lovely Technicolor, and the movie is bashed along with Hans J Salter’s rousing music.

The script by Richard Alan Simmons (screenplay) and Seton I Miller (adaptation) is based on Hall Hunter’s novel Bengal Tiger. So two different goes at the title, Bengal Brigade [Bengal Rifles], and they still didn’t use the original decent one, Bengal Tiger.

Also in the cast are Ursula Thiess, Dan O’Herlihy, Torin Thatcher, Arnold Moss, Michael Ansara, Harold Gordon, Shep Menken, John Dodsworth, Leonard Strong and Shepard Menken.

It is shot in the studio and backlot at Universal Studios, 100 Universal City Plaza, Universal City, California, and at Iverson Ranch, 1 Iverson Lane, Chatsworth, Los Angeles.

© Derek Winnert 2020 Classic Movie Review 10,658

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com