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It’s tendon-biting combat, with guns, trains, planes, chainsaws, and an indestructible all-terrain vehicle (that still couldn’t stand the potholes in the street of Los Angeles)! Rod Taylor, Jim Brown and Yvette Mimieux blast their way through one of the roughest of the ’60s action spectacles, as mercenaries on a mission of mercy that’s really a venal grab to ‘rescue’ a fortune in diamonds. Director Jack Cardiff pushed the limits of acceptability on this one — legends persist about longer, more egregiously violent cuts.

Dark of the Sun

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / The Mercenaries / Street Date December 18, 2011 / available through the Warner Archive Collection / 19.95

Starring: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Peter Carsten, Jim Brown, Kenneth More, André Morell, Olivier Despax, Guy Deghy, Bloke Modisane, Calvin Lockhart.

Cinematography: Edward Scaife.

Film Editor: Ernest Walter

Original Music: Jacques Loussier

Written by Quentin Werty (Ranald MacDougall), Adrian Spies from the...

Commemorating Rod Taylor, we turn to Dark of the Sun, routinely dismissed as a nasty slice of thick-ear but admired by Scorsese for its unflinching brutality and lean, efficient technique: possibly the best film directed by great cinematographer Jack Cardiff, who otherwise could be said to have squandered years on dreck like Girl on a Motorcycle (lovely to look at, inane and obnoxious) and The Mutations (ugly to look at, inaner and obnoxiouser). It's always a bit of a crime when a great specialist becomes an undistinguished all-rounder, and Cardiff's belated return to cinematography was, on the whole, a happy day. His admired first film in the director's chair, Sons and Lovers, looks magnificent, but screenwriter Gavin Lambert felt Cardiff didn't really understand the material.

Well, in a sense the strength of Dark of the Sun, superficially an action/adventure yarn set in the Congo during revolution, is its simplicity:...