The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)

The Light at the Edge of the WorldLighthouses are the best places for troubled loners because they have all the comforts of a clock tower.However, university students aren't the targets in this action movie, pirates are.Fleeing from a failed romance and a murder rap back in the States, ex-miner Denton (Kirk Douglas) heads down south to Cape Horn in 1865 to man a lighthouse.When Kongre (Yul Brynner) and his marauders land on the coastline intent on wrecking ships by dowsing the flame, it's up to Denton and his skeleton crew (Massimo Ranieri, Fernando Rey) to abate the cutthroats and liberate their female captive (Samantha Eggar) before the next cargo ship arrives.Noted for its Spanish locales, particularly the craggy topography where the swashbuckling occurs, this adaptation of Jules Verne's novel is a forgotten gem in the adventure genre. Nevertheless, it must be nice to get a visitor at the lighthouse that isn't a moth.Yellow Lightvidiotreviews.blogspot.ca

I once owned this movie on VHS and while it's been many years since I've laid eyes on it, I remember it well - and that, for me, is generally the sign of a good movie. Some of the criticisms levelled by fellow armchair critics are valid (e.g.overlong) but it's still a very picturesque and curious movie that's definitely worth a look.Douglas is fairly restrained as the sole survivor of a remote island lighthouse, besieged by pirates led by the pitiless Yul Brynner, his clan of bandits opportunistically decide to use the lighthouse to misdirect approaching ships into the rocks where they can pilfer the payloads. Samantha Eggar plays one such shipwrecked maiden taken as a romantic gesture by Brynner, and who Douglas (who's taken refuge in a subterranean cave with his pet monkey), must try and free.Reasonably violent, though it's Jules Verne inspired, it's not the typical family fare you might expect. Little dialogue and a fairly loose plot might not convince some audiences, but overall I remember it to be quite a sombre picture, with a few cruel twists and a fiery conclusion. Great cast as well with support including Fernando Rey and the familiar faces of Aldo Sambrell, Victor Israel and American ex-pat in Spanish pictures, John Clark.

The Light At The Edge of the World marks Kirk Douglas's second filming of a Jules Verne novel. The first of course was one of his most popular films 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. But this film is far more serious and has far more adult themes than Walt Disney's film aimed for the kid trade.This was the last novel Jules Verne had published during his lifetime and it's a story of survival against almost impossible odds. In the original novel Kirk Douglas's character was named Vasquez which certainly was more in keeping with someone assigned to lighthouse duty on Cape Horn. But in giving Douglas's character an Anglo name it better explains his presence on the island and it certainly is in keeping with the international tradition of Jules Verne's writings.Cape Horn is one of the loneliest parts of the globe and the geography of the southern tip of South America. Look on a map of the many islands and rocks in that part of the globe and imagine how rough the sea is because it has only limited space. It's not without reason that sailors in all cultures say that no one is really a true sailor until they've made a voyage crossing from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean in that area. Remember also this is 1865 as Yul Brynner identifies the year and the Panama Canal had not been built.Which makes the lighthouse at Cape Horn an international concern which was something that is ever present in Jules Verne's writings. But then as now there are malevolent forces in the world and they are in this story Yul Brynner and his pirate crew.On one desultory like any other down there, Yul Brynner's ship docks at the island and kills lighthouse keeper Fernando Rey and his young assistant Massimo Ranieri. By sheer dumb luck Douglas is not at the lighthouse when this happens, but he becomes a hunted man by Brynner and his pirate crew who want to set up headquarters there and use the light to pile up as many wrecks as they can plunder. Also they want to eliminate Douglas who's now the only witness to their crimes.I did like this film very much both when first seeing it in the theater and now on VHS. One thing of interest I found here is that there is no ambiguity, no shadings of character. Kirk Douglas is a good guy and Yul Brynner a bad one, no one is going to walk away thinking anything else. In fact Yul Brynner's pirate captain Jonathan Kongre is the most unredeemable villain we've seen on screen since Lee Marvin as Liberty Valance.Definitely fans of Kirk Douglas, Yul Brynner and Jules Verne should earmark this film for their collection.

I read the book first, a fairly good novel by the prolific Jules Verne entitled The Lighthouse at the End of the World. I enjoyed the book sufficiently to look forward with a degree of eagerness to the film, but my anticipation was shattered once I saw the actual movie.It's a terribly dreary affair, about lighthouse keepers near to Cape Horn who are attacked by a band of pirates. The pirates seize control of their island, and more importantly their lighthouse, and use it to steer unsuspecting vessels onto the nearby rocks.Kirk Douglas plays the surviving lighthouse keeper, and Yul Brynner plays the main pirate. Both roles are under written and both stars seem ill at ease with the material they've been signed up to work with. The action is littered with distracting embarrassments, such as the scene where Kirk leaps from a cliff into the sea, but it is so obviously a dummy making the fall that it evokes laughter more than excitement.This might have been an enjoyable kids movie if treated better, but every now and then it lapses into brutality which makes it unsuitable even for the juvenile crowd. In particular, there's a savage scene in which a hostage is skinned alive by the pirates, and we see peels of skin being torn off with a hooked pike to reveal blood and raw flesh beneath. This is not the stuff of a childrens' flick. Furthermore, the film frequently turnd up in an incoherent, chopped up 95 minute edition, which has been cut down from the two hour original so badly that it barely makes sense at all. An interesting dilemma for the audience is whether to watch the short, illogical version, or the long, dreary one. Suffice to say, both are awful!