Star of India (1954)

“Pierre” (Cornel Wilde) returns from his wartime escapades to his country home only to find that it’s been sold by the nasty “Narbonne” (Herbert Lom) to a Dutch countess. “Katrina” (Jean Wallace) informs him that she bought it after a tax repossession, but there might just be a way he could get it back. It seems that “Narbonne” has a beautiful jewel in his possession that was once a family heirloom of her’s. If he can repatriate it with her, she will return his estate to him. Setting of to the castle, he discovers, quite quickly, that the rather foppish but shrewd aristocrat is no pushover and he is going to have to use all of his wits if he is to fetch the stone. Perhaps an impending visit from King Louis XIV (Basil Sydney) could help cause enough of a distraction? Well maybe, but meantime he has also discovered that his new patron isn’t quite whom she seems to be, either - but what game is she playing and whom, if anyone, ought he to trust? Lom rather steals this, or rather his cat does, but Wilde is still on good form with some nimble acrobatics and sword fencing as the story takes a more predicable, but still quite enjoyable, path. No, there’s nobody finest work here either in front or behind the camera, but the production is decent enough and there’s a briskness to the pace that I quite enjoyed. If you like the genre - and I do - then this is still quite a fun story that proves, if that were ever needed, just how fickle cats can be!