ksf-2 Alan Ladd, Lloyd Nolan, and Chill Wills star in this adventure where a bunch of mercenary americans try to make money by selling guns to the Cubans trying to gain their independence. Rossana Podestà is the token female, standing up for her homeland, caught up in all this. Nolan is "Pike", strutting and bragging the whole time. Most of the film is about just trying to get the guns to the island... it's a bit hokey, over-acting and hamming it up for the camera. and having the girl's little brother Juanito tag along is just silly, clearly a gimmick to tug on the heart strings. This one was nearing the end of the line for Alan Ladd; he had started as talkies were getting going. Directed by Gordon Douglas. According to wikipedia , he had started with Hal Roach in the early days, and moved up quickly. Check out Douglas' resume.. he sure directed some big films. This one is okay.. not great, but certainly entertaining. and includes talk of the U.S. ship Maine, which was sunk at Cuba in 1898. later floated and re-sunk off Florida 1912. interesting stuff.

tomsview Even as a 9-year old in 1956, looking up at the screen in a suburban Sydney theatre on a Saturday afternoon, I knew "Santiago" was lacklustre.Set during the 1898 Cuban revolution against Spain, enemies and gunrunners Cash Adams (Alan Ladd) and Clay Pike (Lloyd Nolan) join forces to ship guns to the rebels. However "Santiago" had the same predictable formula of many an Alan Ladd film at the time. Although they opened with an action sequence, they soon settled into an interminable gabfest while Ladd's character (usually embittered by something) sorted out the romantic situation with the girl in the movie - Rosanna Podestà in this case.Rosanna had just launched a thousand ships as Helen in "Helen of Troy" (still a favourite). Apparently she couldn't speak English and learned her lines by rote for that movie. In "Santiago" she may have been dubbed; her voice has a rather detached quality.The novel element in "Santiago" is that the guns are being taken to Cuba on a Mississippi paddle steamer captained by 'Sidewheel' Jones (Chill Wills). In those days, Alan Ladd and Chill Wills were actors I knew better than Laurence Olivier or Marlon Brando.It didn't take a particularly demanding critic to see that the interiors and much else in "Santiago" were filmed in a flat, artless manner, more or less matching the story.The movie came to life a little at the end with a shootout between Cash and Clay Pike (who homages Burt Lancaster's death scene in the much better "Vera Cruz").Incidentally, the Spanish soldiers in "Santiago" are cast in pretty much the same role as the stormtroopers in "Star Wars"; cannon fodder for Cash, Clay and Co. They get taken down so easily by flying knives and bullets that they hardly project any sense of menace at all.At those Saturday afternoon matinees, I caught Alan Ladd at the tail end of his career. Now I can appreciate his work more objectively. Good as he was in "This Gun for Hire" and "Shane" he was just about perfect in "The Great Gatsby". It seems he was a nice guy and loyal. Decades later, his movies always remind me of those much-anticipated afternoons at the 'pictures' even if expectations weren't always met.

JohnHowardReid I remembered this as being rather a dull, ordinary film. Yes, it is a bit on the dull side. There's a vigorous action episode at the beginning and some action at the finale, but in between are long stretches of ho-hum dialogue played by some of the most unconvincing players ever assembled. Mr. Ladd, I suppose, is the worst. He acts bored. Miss Podesta runs him a close second. She is not much more animated than Mr. Ladd and even less likely and convincing as her accent and skin coloration are all wrong for the part of a Cuban Joan of Arc. Yes, the script is as nonsensical as all that, and when you join these characters to Chill Wills drawling his way though the part of a riverboat skipper and some of the others... Lloyd Nolan is probably the most convincing of the lot and even he is no great shakes. Dull is an apt description.But what is not ordinary and makes the film very much worth watching, is John Seitz's color photography. Every frame is a picture, the lighting, the use of color and shadows, the costumes, the sets, the way they are all composed and lit and integrated is always visually exciting and often breathtaking. The film is a feast for the eye and an artists's delight from start to finish.

vitaleralphlouis It's not easy to explain what went wrong with SANTIAGO. It has a basic good story, a top-level cast, and an experienced director; yet it lies virtually flat as a pancake as it unravels on screen. It suffers a serious failure to involve the audience in either the adventure or the romance.This picture was made by Alan Ladd's production company. To Ladd's credit it's next to impossible to see this picture. Never issued in VHS or DVD, never re-issued, difficult to ever find a listing on eBay.Leave this one alone and seek out Iron Mistress, Boy on a Dolphin, or two dozen other very good films starring Alan Ladd.