Diamond City

David Farrar wears a realistically ugly mustache in this movie about Stafford Parker, the leader of the diamond miners along the Vaal during the period when the Boers and the British were wrangling peacefully for control of the land. He loves Salvation Army lass Homor Blackman, and is loved by bar girl Diana Dors, and has the villainous Niall MacGinnis as his adversary; it was all right when he was selling whiskey to the Blacks, but now MacGinnis is buying diamonds from them. Gasp.

Given that all we know about the real Stafford Parker is there was one, it's a surprisingly warty portrait of the period, with the air of an A Western. Farrar acts somewhere between Errol Flynn and Preston Foster in his performance. The movie is peppered with stage extravaganzas of "Up in A Balloon, Boys" and lynchings and battles, so that the editing has an almost stroboscopic effect. It's always at least watchable, and frequently better. I just wish the print was a little lighter.