The Light at the Edge of the World (1971)

By CinemaSerf

Yul Brynner ("Kongre") is the psuedo-sophisticate, but really rather brutal, captain of a pirate ship that quite cleverly decides to capture a lighthouse - manned by a fairly agile Kirk Douglas ("Denton") - and then disable the light so as to manage to wreck passing ships and salvage their luxury spoils whilst killing their crews. "Denton" escapes the purge of his own colleagues, but is unable to prevent this process proving remarkably successful until, that is, the arrival of "Arabella" (Samantha Eggar). "Denton" rather preposterously thinks she might be his ex-fiancée, and "Kongre" a woman upon whom he now fixates, offers her a life of luxury and fine clothes - albeit on their island stuck near the bottom of South America. The story is quite fun and both stars have clearly entered into the spirit of this pretty poorly budgeted and produced maritime yarn with little expectation that it will do either of their careers any good. The dialogue is neither here nor there, and the drama is strung out for way too long before an ending that was really just a bit too downbeat and tacky, then somewhat silly for me. Interesting to see two Hollywood stars reduced to this kind of film and even if Douglas did executive produce it, it's still pretty sad to see them fall quite this far from the top of the mountain.