Chateau Lloyd

I first encountered Rope of Sand while channel surfing.  It must have been on American Move Classics back when all the did was show movies.  (Like MTV, AMC has some serious mission creep.)

I loved it.  It was a near-sequel to Casablanca, with many of the same actors (Paul Henried, Peter Lorre and Claude Rains) and a fun ever-changing plot.

When I began to collect DVDs, I figured it would be easy to find, but it wasn't.  Indeed, when Turner Classic Movies took over the film channel title, I couldn't recall ever seeing it.

Finally, it got released and thanks to online resources, I came to understand that one of the reasons it was so obscure was that its "parentage" was mixed.  It was a Paramount picture, but mostly used Warner Brothers actors (which is why it felt so much like Casablanca).

The Hollywood studios started out focusing on current and future projects, and they survived only from film to film.  The box office was where they made their money. 

Many of the studio bosses had no interest in their back catalog, or any idea of how to monetize it.  That is why the subsequent TV and home video releases were so haphazard.  As television cut into box office profits and the studio system started to break down, selling off the inventory was a way to raise quick cash, so that's what often happened.

In some cases, the buyer realized what they had, but in other cases the only thought was rebroadcast on television.  When videocassettes and DVDs emerged, there was a sudden realization of all the money that was to be had from these classic films and so third parties (like Ted Turner) snapped up as much as they could.  Some studios (who still owned the films) consolidated their holdings by buying out rivals.

Because it was a hybrid, Rope of Sand fell through the cracks a lot and there are a number of films whose DVD is hard if not impossible to find.

As to the film itself, it's great.  Burt Lancaster plays a professional hunter and guide who is returning to Southwest Africa (now Namibia) after being thrown out two years ago.  He had ventured into the forbidden area after his client took off in the night to make his fortune in stolen diamonds.  The client died and Lancaster almost died trying to rescue him.  When they were found, the client's hand still had a raw diamond in its grasp.

The local police commander (Paul Henried) savagely beat Lancaster's character but he divulged nothing.  Now he's back to settle scores.

There's a lot more of course, including a femme fatale (played be Corinne Calvert), Peter Lorre has some nice parts, and Claude Rains pretty much double-crosses everyone.  It's a great film and should be more prominent.  It is one of a handful of movies I never tire of watching.