Ashanti

Faced with a dire script about the kidnapping of an Afro-American doctor into a trans-Sahara slave caravan, Fleischer opts for functional anonymity. Would that his cast had done likewise: all seem determined on self-parody in an otherwise humourless context, with Ustinov essaying a disastrous funny-voice act as the Arab slaver, and Caine, as the doctor's pursuing husband, looking totally uninterested. His recalcitrant camel remains the perfect image of and for a clapped-out primitive 'star vehicle'.