Der Fluch des schwarzen Rubin

The film producer Wolf C. HARTWIG was the godfather of West German adventure films in the 1960s with his RAPID film. The protagonist of a new series was to be introduced with the German actor Thomas ALDER (1932-1968) as private detective Rolf Torring. However, the film, shot in Thailand, was not successful enough at the box office (at least 1,088,000 admissions in CONSTANTIN's distribution) for a sequel.

The plot is not particularly original, but offers exciting entertainment for fans of German adventure flicks. The internationally successful actors Peter CARSTEN and Horst FRANK also appear in other roles. Serge NUBRET (1938-2011) from France is there as a muscle man. And what's also interesting is that the Thai actress Chitra RATANA essentially completed a very early jungle test in a scene with 1000 spiders.

Finally found a copy of this movie. Not exciting but very scenic and colorful. Lots of pageants and elephant parades etc. Boring story about a search for a lost city and a uranium mine. "I am rich" cries Horst Frank. Not much to add except, wait 55 years to watch this and see if YOU like it. Example of some dialogue. (You will tell me what I want to know before I finish you off. I need more time. OK, you have 5 minutes). (I added the B&W photo of the girl in the photo gallery but she isn't in the movie. Strange).

An Italian-French-Thai co-production, which made me see it several times when I was under 10 years old. Many scenes remained in my mind so far, until now, in 2017, when I watched it again and realized that the movie has absolutely no value. The title sounds good but the whole action is nothing else than 1h 42 min of boredom.

Mediocre but especially very cheap, poor man's version of The Saint with plenty of scenes for an unintentional laugh and an almost irrelevant story. Not only the characters, also the two male leads Thomas Alder and Peter Carsten are card-board. The only one who gives its character some body is Horst Frank, but strangely enough it seemed to me that his voice was dubbed. The story takes place in Thailand, and that means that the viewer on several moments has to sit out extended folklore parades and dances inclusive in-depth touristic explanations of what is shown!; the story simply stops during this.

"13 Days To Die" is a film that fails to grab you from the start, and maintains this lack of grip throughout. At no point does the story, about a stolen necklace whose stones are arranged in such a way as to form a code possibly leading to a long-undiscovered treasure, become even remotely interesting. The film looks good (I watched a surprisingly slick widescreen transfer), and has a lot of Thailand color and atmosphere to it. But it's so dull and flat that I actually had to take a nap in the middle of it and finished it later! Somehow the only memorable scenes feature animals - a tiger attack, a crocodile attack, and a monkey monkeying around. There is also a black bodybuilder who spends the entire second half of the movie with his shirt off, and a sweet-faced (and sweet-dubbed, at least in the English version) Thai girl. * out of 4.