King of the Khyber Rifles

Quite a few of those machine-tooled early CinemaScope productions from Twentieth Century Fox seem to be consigned to the dustbins of the memories of those of us who had the good fortune to see them in their full widescreen ratio with a magnetic stereophonic soundtrack during their initial release.

This one, directed with unusual energy by that Hollywood veteran, Henry King; lensed by that master of the color cameras, Leon Shamroy; and graced with a suitably sweeping score by Bernard Herrmann, looks like its lost in the archives where, let us hope, the master negative survives until the day that keepers of the Twentieth vaults come to their senses and favor us with a DVD release in the original (not reduced to anything less, please!) widescreen anamorphic format.

Terry Moore, who enjoyed a brief run as one of Fox's oft-used ingenues (and ladies of somewhat easier virtue, as in "Peyton Place") did seem a bit miscast, but Tyrone Power, Michael Rennie and well-chosen supporting players outshone her shortcomings. I recall that TIME magazine gave this quite a positive review and I remember that its use of mountainous California locations were quite convincing as a substitute for sending a company (or just a second unit) all the way to India's probably less hospitable subcontinent.