Destination Gobi

One of Richard Widmark's lesser known films
Destination Gobi is one of those enjoyable but little known adventure films.
Sort of along the lines of Gregory Peck's Yellow Sky, or Randolf Scot's 7 Men from Now. But this is not a western. It is taken from an little known incident of WW II. Its about a group of Navy meteorologist (led by Widmark). Who while taking weather surveys in the
Gobi desert, meet up with a tribe a Mongols who camp near their base.
They make friends with the tribesmen. Especially after learning that there are Japanese patrols in the area. They get the Navy to fly in 60 saddles as an offering
to the Mongol horsemen for their help. The tribesmen take the saddles, but after a
enemy plane strafes their encampment. The Mongols leave during the night. Stranding
the sailors. The sailors follow and are captured by the enemy. But the Mongols com
to their rescue. and the sailors manage to get back to sea.
This is a great movie! It was once available from Fox in their War Classic...

Would have enjoyed it if I'd actually been able to see it
I was pleased to see that Destination: Gobi had been released on dvd, as it contains Martin Milner, one of my favorite actors. But when I got the dvd and started watching it, it froze up around the 20 minute mark and wouldn't advance any farther. I tried it in two separate players and got the same result. I requested a replacement from Amazon and when I got it, it did the same thing, freezing up at the 20 minute mark and refusing to advance any farther. So I wound up sending the defective discs back to Amazon and I guess I'll wait awhile before getting it again in hopes that FoxConnect has pressed a new batch of dvds that don't have that defect...and I did contact FoxConnect to let them know of the issue, too. But what little bit I DID see of the movie, it was quite enjoyable, so hopefully down the road I can get a copy that will actually play and allow me to see the rest of it.

I wish I could see the whole movie ! IT WAS WORTH THE BOTHER!
I' not reviewing the movie as such. I saw it as a kid on TV (remember NBC Saturday Night Movies?) and it was great then. Based loosely on the real SACO missions(Sino-American Combined Operations) that put weather forecasting and intelligence gathering groups into Japanese controlled Mongolian and Chinese territory. The reason I write this is to publicize that two separate DVDs of this movie were defective in that they froze and digitized at exactly the same part of the story, making me suspicious that the entire run of the specially burned. DVDs is flawed. Be aware of the fact that Amazon is not to blame for this and handled returns and refunds wonderfully. Anybody else have such issues?
Time to complete this review, for today I received DVD number three, and "3's A Charm"! The image quality, audio, and overall copy is simply perfect. The story is loosely based on actual events during WWII, but I feel there's a lot of Hollywood in there too. The actors, again the familiar...

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