Madlyn Rhue

Fighting against government corruption in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Zahrain, rebel leader Sharif (Yul Brynner) leads a small group across the desert in an effort to escape the government soldiers who are bent on capturing them in this action packed film.

It's a mad, mad, mad mad farcical return to the days of the Keystone Cop comedies, on an Ultra Panavision scale, in this star-studded extravaganza. A multitude of people have been given a clue by a dying man (Jimmy Durante) as to the location of $350,000 in stolen bank money that he has buried. They cannot come to an agreement to seek out the loot as a cooperative unit, so they set out separately in a mad race to get to it first. They do not know that the state police are on to them and are simply allowing the loot-seekers to lead them to the stolen bucks. The loot-chasers are ruthless, devious, crackpot and very often dimwitted in their frantic, hilarious race. Stanley Kramer took an intermission from socially conscious subjects to direct this riotous comedy. Photography by Ernest Laszlo.

Amid turmoil in the Middle East, fanatical loyalists attack a police van transporting a nationalist leader (Yul Brynner) to prison and aid his escape into the desert, freeing a convicted American embezzler (Jack Warden) in the process. Sal Mineo plays a student who helps the fugitives flee the pursuant police in a stolen ambulance, and James Mason appears in an uncredited cameo in this vintage adventure yarn.

Fighting against government corruption in the fictional Middle Eastern country of Zahrain, rebel leader Sharif (Yul Brynner) leads a small group across the desert in an effort to escape the government soldiers who are bent on capturing them in this action packed film.