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Under Two Flags (1936)  Happy Birthday, Ronald Colman!

2/9/2016

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I did a review of the fantastic Foreign Legion film WE'RE IN THE LEGION NOW (HERE) a while back,  and it was so fun that I thought I'd do another one.  Today being Ronald Colman's birthday,  it seemed like a good 'two-bird + stone' choice to take a look at the incredibly fun and well-cast UNDER TWO FLAGS,  where Colman shares the screen with the burly Victor McLaglen and the two lovely actresses, Claudette Colbert and Rosalind Russell.  I'm (like most thinking people) a huge fan of Ronald,  a fan of Foreign Legion stories (also of Colman's silent legion masterpiece BEAU GESTE) and it's his birthday,  thus, is a great excuse to write!

UNDER TWO FLAGS is a 1936 production,  based on the novel of the same name by English writer Maria Ramé,  known by her nom de plume Ouida.  Ouida was a great writer of adventure novels,  many of them Orientalist swashbucklers,  and UNDER TWO FLAGS is quite that.  It shares it's fame with her wonderful 1872 novel,  A DOG OF FLANDERS.  UNDER TWO FLAGS is without a doubt her most famous novel,  having been produced as a stage play,  and four film adaptations, in 1912, 1916 (featuring the smouldering 'vamp' Theda Bara), 1922, and this Colman version.  I've read the novel in one of my several Ouida bursts,  and it's a wonderfully written and colourful taste of pre-pulp pulp fiction.

In the film Victor (in the novel Bertie Cecil) honourably takes the rap for a crime actually committed by his brother.  He takes off in a dash,  joining up and becoming a sergeant in the French Foreign Legion.   Dapper and handsome,  Victor attracts the attentions and affections of the pixie-like French barmaid "Cigarette" played with almost punky spunk by Colbert.  Sadly for Cigarette,  Victor only has eyes for the luminous aristocrat Lady Venetia,  played by Rosalind Russell.  Well,  this doesn't sit well with Sgt. Victor's commander, Victor McLaglen's Major J.C. Doyle.  The gruff Doyle is unrequitedly smitten with the impish Cigarette,  and this puts him and our debonair Sergeant on the opposite sides of a potentially dangerous divide.

Will this love triangle doom the Legion in the face of an onslaught of fierce Arab tribesmen?!?

This was an amazingly pleasurable experience.  Colman (looking quite a bit like Michael Kitchen at times) was at his best here,  with a glint in his eye and exuding charm in every frame.  Colbert was lovely,  and though she came across as mildly irritating initially,   I had the  appropriate fondness for Cigarette by the end of the film.  Victor McLaglen was both 'charging-bullish' and charming,  looking quite the big brute in this one,  and Rosalind Russell was every bit the beautiful lady.  Also in the cast was Fritz Leiber Sr. (father of the sci fi writer),   Thomas Beck (from a number of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films),  Nigel Bruce, Gregory Ratoff (director of the 1960 OSCAR WILDE), Herbert Mundin ('Much' from Errol Flynn's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD), and John Carradine.  With a  crisp script and a great cast,  and with solid  direction by Frank Lloyd (THE LAST COMMAND and BLOOD ON THE SUN),  it's a rollickin' good time.  The 1930's had so many of this kind of exuberant adventure,  and the more I see, the more I love this wonderful decade.  Also,  I'm a fan of this sort of Orientalist adventure,  and this is another in my effort to document these 'wild, wild East'-type movies.

It's a perfect thing to celebrate Ronald Colman's birthday!

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A Yank in Libya (1942)

2/8/2016

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"I say,  Mr. Malone,  in this country, Allah is more important than a headline"

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Synopsis: A YANK IN LIBYA begins with a chase. A wise-cracking, hard-fisted American reporter, Mike Malone (played by Walter Woolf King), dressed in Arab garb, is being chased by armed Arabs through a crowded souk in British-controlled Libya. In his hands is a sophisticated rifle of German make; he had stolen it as proof of a suspected connection between the Nazis and a fanatical nationalist element in the Arab tribes. Sneaking into the hotel room of a western woman, the lovely and whip-smart Nancy (played by the charming Joan Woodbury, known to Phantom Empires for her role in the Mountie classic, NORTHWEST TRAIL), he doffs his local gear, entreats her to hide the rifle for him, and then he climbs out the window. He heads for the British consulate to warn them of the Nazi plan to foment rebellion in the region. Unfortunately, the doddering consul rebuffs him, considering him somewhat mad (to which Malone brazenly dons the consul's pith helmet and saunters away with it, followed by much protest). Frustrated, Malone contacts his British Intelligence pal, the stalwart, pipe-smoking Phillip Brooks-Grahame, in an attempt to further his main goal...to get that story!

Following several leads, Malone discovers the presence of a Nazi named Yusef Streyter, disguised as a Czech merchant. Streyter has his diabolical hooks in the power-mad Ibrahim, the second-in-command of the righteous Sheikh David (played charmingly by Duncan Reynaldo, the actor best known for playing the Mexican hero the Cisco Kid on TV and radio. Incidentally, the director here, Albert Herman, ended up directing Reynaldo on the Cisco Kid TV series). The devious Nazi, of course, working to convince Ibrahim to back-stab his leader and take control. Malone gets wind of this scheme and enlists friend Philip in the great game. In the process, Malone meets a Brooklyn-born grifter in the form of Parkyarkarkas (generally spelled "Parkyakarkas", the extra "r" added in the credits of this film, was the real life pseudonym of Jewish radio comedian Harry Einstein, known for his work on the Eddie Cantor show and his own radio comedy, MEET ME AT PARKY'S. He is the father of both Super Dave Osborne and Albert Brooks), living undercover as the slapstick "Arab" razor-salesman/horse thief, "Suleiman Abdullah Hasan ben Stinko ben broke...also ben Eastside, ben Westside, ben all over". He's a big cartoon of a man, but a sly one...a man of many secrets. Surprisingly, Parkyarkarkas becomes not only a sidekick, but a valuable ally in the story.

Thus the action begins!


As a long-time Muslim convert, I have an interesting relationship to this type of orientalist plot. I grew up on a farm in rural Washington state, and the rest of the world seemed like a distant fantasy. Things like the great wall of China and the Kaba in Mecca might as well have been on the moon to folks in my area, and people like desert bedouins or African pygmies were generally categorised as "people that I will never meet". My first exposure to anything Islam-related was at the ripe old age of eight. It was a record titled THE SOUNDS OF ARABIA, which my mom let me buy from the Salvation Army (with a pile of other cheap LPs), in an attempt to circumvent my interest away from her own record collection. It had some Arabic music, some recordings of street scenes, the Adhan (the Islamic call to prayer), and, most importantly, it turned out, the first surah (chapter) of the holy Qur'an, Al Fatiha.

I was transfixed.

I listened to that record over and over, and with the transliteration I learned (sort of) how to recite along with it. I had no idea what it was, but I knew that it was me, and I was it. A couple years later I got a National Geographic magazine about Mecca (Nov. 1978, I believe), which had Muslims circling the Kaba. I told my mom, "I want to do that". From then on, I was on a lifelong path to what I have now; the most inner peace that I have ever known. Along the way I watched movies. I read comic books. I saw cartoons, I listened to radio shows. In all of these things were many western-centric tales of the "mystical East", with manly, stiff-upper-lipped white men braving the dangers of foreign lands. They were like orientalist cowboy movies. I was in the odd position of both admiring the (usually British) hero, and rooting for the Arab, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Afghan, & generic stereotyped orientals. Though one could make a credible argument that these things are deeply racist at their core, and this kind of thing really has no relation to Islam at all (there are actually fewer Muslims in the Arab counties than in, say, Indonesia), I'm still a little soft for them.

In the remote past, these were blurry windows into my heart, and eventually my future.

That said, I thoroughly enjoyed A YANK IN LIBYA, and though it had a great many stereotypical elements (common to B-type pictures, whatever the subject), it wasn't thoroughly off the deep end. In a way, this one was a cut above many that I've seen. It had a pretty snappy script (Malone: "The greatest story I ever tripped over in my life, and she tries to fizzle it right in my kisser"), and some shockingly sympathetic views, although admittedly tempered with liberal doses of neo-Victorian paternalism.

A few cases in point are in order.

For the Arab tribes in the film, under the thumb of the British, it was implied that their disaffection and chafing at this yoke was justifiable. It seemed understood that this was the kind of situation that could make them vulnerable to manipulation from the outside, using a more zealous minority to stir up the already heated emotions of the locals. The leader, Sheikh David, is considered righteous and fair, and in this film, the Arabs have to be tricked, and behind the back of this pious and fair Muslim! He even courts the white woman, to which nobody (including the lady herself), even bats an eye! Relative to expectation, the writers give him a SHOCKINGLY open-minded monologue in an appreciated, but ultimately failed attempt to convince her into matrimony:

"Are we not true believers? Is not your prophet, as well as my prophet, just and righteous? Are we not supposed to learn piety and humbleness out of good books, your Bible and my Quran? Nancy, so differently expressed, our philosophies of life are fundamentally identical."

It's quite a statement for a film from the Evangelical fundamentalist America of WWII.

Of course, there are the usual awkwardly stiff themes for these things. There's the exotic, "sexually generous" belly dancer, the wild-eyed Arab, and all sorts of silly exclamations and oaths: "By the beard of the prophet" (P.B.U.H.) is a common one, and things like, "Unbelieving dog! may your father never cease his barking!". Yep, silly. Also, in the end, once the Nazi and his tribal minion are put down, the "good" Arab shows how "good" he is by surrendering the German guns, gratefully and happily re-submitting to the "benevolent" British yoke. From a historical perspective, it's LAWRENCE OF ARABIA in pulp fiction form, with the noble British conspiring to hold onto Arab lands, using whatever means necessary to keep things under control, including espionage.

For their own good, old chap, wot?.

In 1942 there were a mere few years to Indian independence, and the war would weaken England to a point where the empire would soon die, leaving all these previously conquered lands without a modern history of independent governance. What we see in these regions today is a direct result of this irresponsible abandonment, with the extreme elements, just as in this film, left to ravage their lands unchecked, leading to the unchallenged establishment of bought-and-paid-for dictatorships across the so-called "east".


It's a clear truth, currently much ignored.

From a literary vantage point, A YANK IN LIBYA is pure John Buchan. Buchan's 1916 novel GREENMANTLE is very much this story, with hero Richard Hannay also trying to prevent the Germans (during WWI) from whipping the Arabs into revolt. Malone's pal Phillip has a doppelganger in the book, in the form of Hannay's own pal, the adventurer Sandy Arbuthnot. I imagine this movie as a sort of cliffhanger serial version of a Buchan adventure, but spliced into one tight, action-packed narrative. As a voracious reader of pulps, and a study of this sort of thing, I was pleased with the overall product. It was good-humoured, serious when it needed to be, with an above-average script for a programmer. The acting was solid and lively, as well. The baddies were appropriately bad, the good guys were dashing and brave, and the newsman Mike Malone was exactly as cynical and "reporter-ish" as he ought to have been.


With good pulp scenery and a sense of the mythical "exotic East", it's a really fun adventure! The cast is very colourful, and I honestly wish they had made more of this kind of thing together.

Notes:

Arabic use: Minimal, limited to a few terms, including "assalaamu alaykum", and its response, "wa laykum Salaam". Though these were (surprisingly) properly used and pronounced, others, such as the term "Sheikh" was not; everyone, including the "Arab" characters, pronounced it "Sheek", instead of the proper "Shey-kh". Not a big deal, as that's still a common mispronunciation. There is only the occasional written Arabic, but it's complete gibberish, written by the studio art department, "in the style of".

Music: Though an actual Arabic band is shown onscreen, the music is the typical nonsense "middle-eastern" gobbledygook, with "clop-clop" wooden block sounds imitating camel steps, and "hoochie-koochie"-type flute licks.
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Nine Hours to Rama ~ (1963) The Death of Ghandi

2/3/2016

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I'll start off this review of the 1963 British film 9 HOURS TO RAMA with a caveat of sorts. I have not generally minded, in a general sense anyway, the casting of white people as other races. The farther back you go in American (read: western) film, the more it's to be expected; human culture is made up of humans, and by their very nature, humans are tribalistic...and therefore more inclined to favor their own.  Some of these generally unfortunate casting choices I am quite fond of. Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto is a hero of mine, and Warner Oland in his classic role as Charlie Chan, strangely, is (in my opinion) impossible to improve upon by anyone...regardless of race.

I have to admit, having written that, that Horst Buchholz (a German guy), Jose Ferrer (from Puerto Rico) and Robert Morley as Indian people (especially the extremely British Robert Morley), threw me off at first. Horst had pulled off a Mexican pretty well in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but his role here as an Indian guy, initially at least, burned my eyes a bit. I did give it a chance though, as the location and subject matter are dear to me; I've been to Pakistan and India (India as recently as a year ago), and to see a film in this setting is totally my cup of darjeeling.


Based on the 1962 novel by Stanley Wolpert, It's setting is the period of transition from the 200-year yoke of British rule in India to independence, and perhaps tragically, the partition of the northwest into the modern state of Pakistan. Ghandi-ji ("ji", in Hindi and Urdu, is an honorific title of respect added to Indian names) has done his legendary work, and the land is in turmoil. This is basically the story of the end of Ghandi-ji's life, and more specifically, the story of his murderer, the anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist Nathuram Vinayak Godse, energetically played by Horst Buchholz.

Here's a nutshell, non-spoiler synopsis:

It's a period of fear for Ghandi-ji's life at this stage. Superintendant Das, played by Jose Ferrer, is under pressure to keep Ghandi-ji safe; that means interrogations and arrests. On top of that, Ghandi-ji refuses to take added measures to keep himself out of harm's way, which, in his mind, would distance himself from the people. The heat is on, so to speak. Buchholz's character, Nadsuram Godse, is a lost young man without a real purpose in his life; a disappointment to his father, he is looking for meaning wherever he can find it. Unfortunately he lacks the intelligence and self-awareness to get what he wants. His failures are a constant source of frustration to him, until his addled mind comes to a conclusion...that, in spite of the stalwart efforts of Ferrar's Superintendant Das, Ghandi-ji must die.

It seems to be the way of the world, then, as now.

Overall, I found this film fascinating and well done. Buchholz overdoes the 'wild-eyed young man' thing a bit, but I thought it was within acceptable parameters. Ferrar was the rock during the whole thing. His gravitas carried the story along where a lesser presence might have failed, and if I'm being honest, he passed as a Desi guy pretty well, in spite of actually being originally from Puerto Rico (Desi is a catch-all term for people from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, etc.). He reminded me a great deal of my friend and former landlord Munir, who is not without a good chunk of gravitas himself.  Indian actor & writer J. S. Casshyap, who played Ghandi-ji, was absolutely stunning.  He was almost like a photo come to life, and he radiated the kind of goodness that made Ghandi-ji one of the great heroes and role models of modern times. A few times I even had to remind myself that he wasn't actually the real Ghandi!

The film does a great job of giving us the feeling of that period. Filmed in various locations in India, it showed the colourful, crowded streets, the dazzling hodgepodge of cultural types, with some fantastic music (any film that starts with a Thani Avartam, which is a South Indian drum solo, gets my attention right away; there were the South Indian drums Mridangam ;double-headed barrel drum], the Kanjira [small frame drum] & Ghatam [clay pot drum], along with the unlikely addition of the north Indian Tabla), and a feeling of change that comes off as palpable and dramatic.  Speaking of starts, btw,  NINE HOURS TO RAMA has possibly the most excellent titles known to cinema,  period.  there is as much drama in the titles alone as the average movie has in total...very interesting and captivating.

Fans of British empire films, Indian cinema and solid drama should really try to see this. It's fantastic, and it tells a story that many people, Americans at least, know little about.


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Taras Bulba (2009)  Hardcore Cossack action

1/20/2016

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Having loved the fantastic 1962 version of the Nikolai Gogol novel TARAS BULBA,  I thought it would be fun to present the more recent version, in spite of my usual moratorium on reviews of modern productions.  Made by a Russian of Ukrainian descent and financed by the Russian ministry of culture,  it apparently caused a bit of a stir amongst Ukrainian nationalists for it's pro-Russian nationalist message.

This version, unlike the Hollywood version,  was actually filmed in Ukraine, much of it in Zaporizhia, the homeland of the Zaporizhian Cossacks, of which the title character belongs.  It was exciting to see these characters and events depicted in the genuine lands of the Cossacks...it really added a bit of extra historical paint to a wonderful picture.  TARAS BULBA was wonderful.  It was a brutal war film;  the battle scenes were exceptionally violent,  and where torture was shown,  it was as violent and cruel as I've ever seen in a film.  That was refreshing(if one can say that about torture, hehehe).  This version followed the second, rewritten version of the novel(a forced re-write by the Russian government of the time), so the fate of Taras Bulba himself is quite gruesome,  if wonderfully noble. It doesn't shy away from it as the Hollywood version did.

PictureTwo Bulbas...Stupka vs illustration
Bulba was played by the famous Ukrainian actor Bogdan Stupka, who was also in the great Cossack action movie WITH FIRE AND SWORD (Ogniem i mieczem).  He has a great older-man's charisma and sense of authority,  and the grizzled quality he brought fit the character perfectly.  Bogdan Stupka,  physically,  was chosen very well;  the typical depiction of Taras Bulba in paintings and illustrations is of a hardened,  stocky,  elder man,  with a personal fire and a jaunty appearance.  Stupka's Taras Bulba is so evocative of the character as written...after a bit I forgot that he wasn't actually  Bulba himself,  which was ideal.

The rest of the casting was very good, if a tad bland in some cases;  fortunately,  as can be seen below,   great attention was made in choosing the Cossacks.  These are men who look like hardened veterans of many battles,  and they give the impression of having witnessed the worst that humankind has to offer.  I was greatly impressed by all of them.  The fight scenes were amazingly wild,  and the rough life of the Cossack was given very little of the romantic, "happy peasant" vibe that the Yul Brynner version had so much of.

               This TARAS BULBA is well worth looking for;  if you like your action hardcore, be prepared for a feast!

See also my review of the Russian film THE COSSACKS - HERE
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Stranglers of Bombay (1959)

4/15/2015

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Recently I was digging though my discs looking for something to watch.  I have tons of great stuff,  but the mood monster being what it is, my eyes rolled over the titles,  nonplussed.  They were glazing over as I passed through the genres.  Fortunately I passed by one of the best films in my collection,  if not one of the best ever made...Gunga Din! 

I snapped it up and gobbled it down like seasoned curly fries.

Sadly,  and I mean SADLY,  it was over far too soon for my movie craving.  It strikes so many chords for me;  adventure, history,  the British Empire,  Rudyard Kipling (I'm a big fan),  and more importantly,  one of the best casts of any move ever made.  The 30's, right?  Such an era...so many fantastic pictures.  I really wanted more of the same,  but really,  are there more like that?  Well,  actually there are,  and lots of them.  I went back to my shelves for another look.

Well,  I dug up a Hammer Films collection I'd picked up last year,  the "Icons of Adventure".  I'm not one who would normally buy Hammer films (too many hipsters into them for postmodernist kitsch),  but with titles like The Pirates of Blood River, and The Terror of the Tongs,  what self-respecting pulp fiction fiend could resist?  I took it out for the British Empire actioner Stranglers of Bombay.  It was perfect for my mood, according to its description;  The British East India Company of the 1830s is being assailed by wealthy landowners for the lack of protection for their convoys.  Entire convoys are disappearing,  and in fact,  so are thousands of individuals all over India.  Could the mysterious killer cult of Kali be behind it?

Uh,  there probably isn't anything in my collection closer to Gunga Din content-wise than that.

So I did my usual thing and watched the trailer clip on Youtube. 
"It's true!",  the narrator exclaimed.  "It really happened!",  he said. There were lots of sharp cuts to a statue of Kali,  and to wild-eyed cultists in loincloths. 
This obsession with shocking acts that we're supposed to (on some level) be titillated by, was pretty off-putting.  What can I say,  I'm old fashioned in many ways.  It seemed pretty bad...exploitation cinema at its cheesiest.  In the end, obviously,  I decided to give it a shot. I was hungry for the vibe,  and beside that,  I had actually forked out the cash for the set, right?  I'm glad I gave it a chance.

Stranglers of Bombay is 100% traditional Cliffhanger serial/B-reel in feel.  The production is very much that of the later serials,  with all the same choices that have come to embody that style.  The costuming,  the filming,  the plot,  the script,  all were just as any pulp magazine-type critter would wish them to be;  full of action,  mystery,  and exotic, far-off locales.  There were honestly moments when I expected The Phantom to burst out of the jungle,  or to see Commando Cody duking it out with a herd of Thuggee cultists! 

PictureThe stalwart Guy Rolfe
The cast was shockingly good, as well.  When I read that famed film baddie Guy Rolfe was our hero, I was surprised.  He's a great actor,  and some of his villains are among the best in classic film.  Was he hero material though?  As it turns out,  yes he is,  and very much so.  It shouldn't have amazed me.  He's been in some of my fave movies of all time.  Ivanhoe (1952),  King of Kings (1961),  Taras Bulba (1962),  Nicholas and Alexandra (1971, reviewed by me HERE),  were all amazing films,  and the list really does go on and on.  He brings a special kind of arrogance and class which make his villains something special, and after watching Stranglers of Bombay it seems that he had so much more in this toolbox.

His character, Captain Harry Lewis,  is very serious in this one.  He's the kind of man that thinks,  and feels,  who observes and takes part in equal measure.  It's this empathetic approach,  especially in political matters between the East India Company and the Indian people, that has him marginalised in his position.  His penchant for mixing with the people,  for treating them as fellow humans,  has created such a bond with them that, when so many go missing, he is possessed by the need to know why.  He presses his superior officer to form a team to investigate the disappearances.  It backfires when his commanding officer brings in the son of an old school chum, the mildly stalwart but priggish
Captain Christopher Connaught-Smith (played perfectly by Aussie/Brit actor Allan Cuthbertson) to do the job.  Of course,  the new guy has no understanding of the indigenous culture, and on top of that,  he believes that Captain Lewis is imagining things.

He quickly found out the ghastly truth!

Ghastly it was,  indeed.  The goggle-eyed villain relished in the cutting off of hands, and the gouging out of eyes, as well as the ubiquitous stranglings that the Thuggee dacoits were so famous for.  I really did like this a whole lot,  and frankly,  I have no idea why I hadn't heard about it.  It has so much of everything that I enjoy about that genre (if stiff-upper-lip British adventuring is a genre)
,  and true to all such excellent things,  it left me howling for more.  It had lots surprises,  and lots of things to keep a diehard pulp addict occupied.  Speaking of addicts,  the Doctor Who fans out there will be thrilled by Roger Delgado (who played the ever-so-evil Master, of course) in the cast,  who plays the evil Hindu priest's main henchman!

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Kali Ma craves BLOOD!
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One drummer and...two other guys
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Roger Delgado, the...Servant, of Kali!

I was very impressed all around.  Of course there were a few quibbles to be had if one decided to look for them,  but the fun I had made overlooking them a pleasure.  Well,  perhaps not the scene depicted here with the three Indians playing the Dholak drums.  The first guy is quite excellent,  but the other two are literally wiggling their hands anti-rhythmically over the drums.  I studied Indian and near/central Asian percussion for many years, so probably nobody will notice but me;  it's my tiny little cross to bear in regards to this film.  

I would certainly recommend it to anyone who loves this sort of thing.  I promise that it will be a pleasantly adventurous romp through Gunga Din territory,  and while lacking the epic scope and thespic virtuosity of that most revered classic, it certainly makes up for it with pulpy goodness!
It's worth mentioning here the very good 1988 Pierce Brosnan film The Deceivers, which follows a similar path. A British officer encounters the Thuggee, and in infiltrating their ranks, begins to become one of them.  It's a sort of British Raj Donnie Brasco.  It's based on the book of the same name,  published in 1952, and written by the incredible Lt. Colonel John Masters.  Masters, besides being one of my favourite writers,  was at the front lines in the enforcement of the Empire in India.  His books are unabashed in their frankness in regards to the subject,  and are incredibly well written.

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We're in the Legion Now (1936)

9/7/2014

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I'm on a roll this week with great pulpy adventure pictures!  I just had the pleasure of watching the 1936 French Foreign Legion film,  We're In the Legion Now, and what amazing fun it was!  I was coming off the little buzz that I had from the 1936 William Boyd romp, Go-get-'em, Haines (reviewed HERE); I really enjoyed Eleanor Hunt's impish charm in that one,  so I went digging for another movie with her in it, and voila', here she was.  It also works out in another way,  as I was already prepping a review of a Foreign Legion film, yet another 1936 screen burner, Under Two Flags...said review coming along soon.  I've hit a Legion-type hot spot.

Based on a 1934 story by prolific pulp author J.D. Newsom called The Rest Cure (which was also apparently the American name for the film),  We're in the Legion Now stars the ubiquitous character actor Reginald Denny, sidekicked by veteran comedian Vince Barnett. In lighthearted fashion, they play Dan Linton and Spike Conover (Isadore Simonski in the original story), two former New York racketeers on the run from a former "business associate";  apparently this mobster, Al Perelli, had a penchant for murder and kidnappings, and our decent duo wanted no part of that sort of thing.  The guys were basically just good guys looking to get fashionably intoxicated during the prohibition, in the process got mixed up with the wrong crowd. Having had enough, they escape to France,  where they begin to freely imbibe on an epic scale.

During their liquor-fueled fun,  they find out that Al Perelli has come after them, which gets them to reconsider their options.  During a public drinking session they meet two English sisters,  one of whom is married to a British officer in the French Foreign Legion.  The guys express a desire to move on to greener pastures,  and the gals suggest Morocco...but the catch is, they would have to join up for a five-year stint in the Legion!  Not their first choice, of course, but fate steps in, Al Perelli shows up (with a Tommy-gun in a violin case),  and the boys set off for Morocco as Legionnaires!  There they encounter wild Arabs,  beautiful ladies,  brutal hardships, and mutiny!

It's great fun from beginning to end.


I really loved the cast.  I've always enjoyed Reginald Denny;  in spite of his being cast as a token Brit,  he always delivers the goods with class and style (If you get a chance, see him in the classic Canadian Mountie movie Fort Vengeance).  I was a bit confused by his character in this movie though, as he was ostensibly an American, but his accent vacillated between his usual classic British r.p. clip and a gobbly American-ish drawl.  Otherwise he was completely charming and appropriately stalwart.  Denny's sidekick, played by comedic character actor Vince Barnett,  was as hilarious as a wisecracking, bottle-tossing, Brooklyn drunkard should be.  He was apparently best known from the Andy Griffith Show and it's spinoff, Mayberry R. F. D..  Eleanor Hunt, as the stunning American Expat songstress Honey Evans, sizzles on an entirely new level from her role in Go-Get-'Em Haines...the gams alone definitely made the search worthwhile!

From the cultural perspective, while I don't generally judge these low-budget action frolics by their accuracy,  it's worth noting that the bit of the Islamic call to prayer was accurate,  and the music was also at least actual Arabic music,  with an Oud being played correctly (as opposed to a Hollywood orchestra playing faux-Arabic slop), and what sounded like a Raita, which is a type of shawm.  From there things go fairly wonky;  badly imitated Arabic writing on the walls (for local flavour, I assume, but there were letters from Persian that aren't found in the Arabic script),  women in Hejab wearing pantaloons, and one surreal scene in which a Berber drum & hand-clapping music party was overlaid with the Arabic Oud from the earlier scene, along with the end-blown Nai flute...a mix that would never happen.  Oh well,  a little is better than nothing, wot?  In any case, one has to set aside quite a bit in these Imperialist-type pictures (westerns, British Empire, Foreign Legion, etc.),  and the fun generally makes the hits on one's pedantry worthwhile!

I thoroughly recommend
We're in the Legion Now;  it's top-flight b-reel action,  with a rakish edge and a cheery demeanor.  Any weekend afternoon would be perfect for it;  it's completely entertaining!


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Be sure to check out my new pal Jack Wagner's FANTASTIC French Foreign Legion blog,  MON LEGIONNAIRE!  I stumbled on to it while looking for the poster for the American version of  this film, and I found the pulp cover here on his page.  It's a fantastic resource for Legion-related history and lots of pulp stories in .PDF format.  In fact, you can get The Rest Cure pulp story there.

          To visit, click the image on the left!


Finally, here's a taste of the kinds of Moroccan music hinted at in the film.  Enjoy!


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Tyrone Power - KING OF THE KHYBER RIFLES (1953)

5/5/2014

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The men who govern India...more power to them and her! ...are few.  Those who stand in their way and pretend to help them with a flood of  words are a host. And from the host goes up an endless cry that India is the home of thugs, and of three hundred million hungry ones.  The men who know...and Athelstan King might claim to know a little...answer that she is the original home of chivalry and the modern mistress of as many decent, gallant, native gentlemen as ever graced a page of  history.

Talbot Mundy ~ King of the Khyber Rifles

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Those are the stiff-upper-lip words that begin the brilliant novel King of the Khyber Rifles,  written in 1916 by the legendary London-born adventure writer Talbot Mundy.  Mundy was famous for his tales of the British Raj (Raj means "reign" in the Hindi language), during their occupation of the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan during the rule of Queen Victoria.  Inspired by real-life titans, such as the polymath and polyglot, Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton, his books are the proto-typical ripping yarns;  his stalwart adventurers faced the dangers inherent in trying to control that wild and culturally diverse region.  Like Rudyard Kipling,  Sax Rohmer and H. Rider Haggard,  his stories are from the British perpsective,  but like Haggard,  Mundy leaned slightly more toward the east.

The protagonist of the novel is Captain Athelstan King,  an agent of her majesty in what was at that time northern India (now Afghanistan and Pakistan) during the first world war. As in reality, the war was in mid-swing during the novel,  and the Germans and Turks were determined to foster unrest in the tribal areas to further burden their British opponents.    As with such writers as John Buchan, tales of the Empire's military struggles across the globe were very popular among British youth.  That seems to be a traditional subject at the time,  as both the Boer and Crimean wars generated their own exciting literary output;  this new war, being called "the war to end all wars" did so on a grand scale, and would continue to inspire both prose and film for decades to come. 

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Without a doubt Mundy's most famous and popular book,  it was first filmed in 1929 as The Black Watch,  starring Victor McLaglen and Myrna Loy (and, apparently, it had uncredited early parts for John Wayne and Randolph Scott).  It was directed by John Ford,  and though a relatively early work (he already had dozens of movies under his belt by this time),  it has all of the taut drama and action that make his stuff worth seeking out.  Initially released as a silent,  it was a talkie,  and thankfully so;  there are so many wonderful scenes that really benefit from the many regional accents in the story.  McLaglen really shines in this one, and the bravura performance that he would later bring to Gunga Din shows it's roots very clearly here.   The Talbot Mundy animus rings throughout.

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Tyrone Power is the lead in the later (and greater) version of the story, appropriately titled King of the Khyber Rifles.  Though Power was on the final stretch of his career when this was released in 1953,  his vigour and intensity had diminished not even a tiny bit.  His adventure movies of this period are some of his most interesting and nuanced.  Here,  as the serious-minded (one could even say stern), Athelstan King,  Power burns like a wildfire.

Now, for lovers of the book,  it would be a mistake to come to the film thinking that they're the same animal.  Though they share some of the same cosmetic features,  the film has been altered to a pretty large degree.  It has been transformed into the film version,  which is fine,  and I believe the changes make it more suitable for the simpler needs of the cinematic experience,  where visuals and greatly delivered dialogue oftentimes do the work of a novel's detail and complexity of plot.  Apropos of my earlier comment, the film is a bit more Rudyard Kipling to the book's H. Rider Haggard,  which,  in this case,  is a good thing.

Power's King is a half-caste;  his father was English,  and his mother was an Afghan Muslim.  Thus, he speaks the Pashto language of the Afghan tribal people,  and he is friendly to them...so long as they are subordinate to British rule.  King, after all, is the Queen's man.

The villain of the story (though ENTIRELY different from the novel),  is the "fanatical"  tribal bandit Kurram Khan,  who,  along with the Islamic Mullahs in the mountain areas, is fomenting rebellion in the people of the hills...by any brutal means necessary.  He is portrayed here by the brilliant Guy Rolfe,  who, it seems,  played more villains than anything else, by far!  In fact,  in the same year as King of the Khyber Rifles,  he played the baddie in another orientalist fantasy,  The Veils of Baghdad (as the evil Kasseim),  as well as Prince John in Ivanhoe, the year before!  It goes without saying that his villain's soliloquies are maniacally well-practiced and insidious.  He's very much the Osama Bin Laden of the piece,  and much like that real Mujahid,  his martial excesses are telegraphed to the audience in the form of a goggle-eyed,  power-mad (hehehe),  inhuman monster...with no normal human reason for opposing the Empire.

I was very impressed by the detail of the film,  and by the nods to local colour and detail.  The Pashto language, like Dari,  the other most common language in Afghanistan,  is  somewhat similar to the Farsi language spoken in Iran.  I understand a good deal of Farsi, as well as urdu and Arabic,  and it seems to me that the dialogue of the tribal characters in the film was appropriate,  if not entirely correct.  I also noticed a few regional colloquialisms used, which were gratifying;  King says of a defector from Kurram Khan's ranks as wanting to "eat British salt",  meaning that he wished to earn his sustenance in the service of the Empire...a folk expression heard as far away as the Punjab.

I was also impressed by the philosophical challenges to imperialism throughout the movie.  Athelstan King, as the son of a Muslim woman,  is treated quite poorly by the political infrastructure and by it's agents.  He's denied invitations to officers' parties, and even loses a roommate when a fellow officer learns of his racial (and possibly spiritual) mix.   The positive portrayals of Muslims in this film are a pleasant surprise, in spite of some stereotyping,  as well as the complexities of the local political perspective.  Not to drag contemporary politics into a simple movie review,  but the moral problems raised by this simple adventure story are very timely to the issues that the United states and Britain still face in that part of the world.  It shows how the presence of a foreign element, determined to change and control an area, can create increasingly more hostile insurrections and challenges to that outsider influence.

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Still,  King of the Khyber Rifles is very much,  in the end,  a tale of the Empire; it stands firmly in the tradition of films like the afore-mentioned Gunga Din, Oliver Reed's The Brigand of Kandahar (1965), Rock Hudson's Bengal Brigade (1954), Gary Cooper's Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), Raymond Massey in The Drum (1938), and of course, Errol Flynn's 1950 classic,  Kim.   Like the western film, which shares many of the same sociopolitical issues,  we manage to set aside our problems with the reality of the thing,  and get into some great action well told!

The director of this amazing picture is the somewhat ironically-named Henry King.  King was an amazing critter in his own right, having over a hundred acting roles under his belt from the early days of film, as well as a long and prolific career as a director.  Besides King of the Khyber Rifles,  King directed Tyrone Power in such amazing movies as The Untamed (1955),  Prince of Foxes (1949),  The Black Swan (1942),  and  The Sun Also Rises (1957),  as well as such great actors as Errol Flynn, Eva Gardner, Spencer Tracy,  Gordon MacRae, Cameron Mitchell, and (in my opinion) most effectively with Gregory Peck, who did many of his best films with King.

Honestly,  with the possible exception of Errol Flynn,  I can't think of a more well-rounded actor for action pictures of his era than Power;  his gravitas, masculinity and charm are possessing,  and that leadership vibe, so often lost to today's actors, are his in spades.  His characters are people that one would follow "once more, unto the breach",  and his King of the Khyber Rifles is no less so.  It's a Powerhouse film that you shouldn't live without!


If you would like to read the fantastic novel before (or after) you see the film, here is a public domain eBook for your Kindle!
talbot_mundy_-_king_of_the_khyber_rifles.prc
File Size: 469 kb
File Type: prc
Download File


Also, for them that are interested both in the regions of India and Pakistan as well as in detective fiction,  I have an article about the various home-grown sleuths from various South Asian countries.  You can read it HERE.

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This is my entry in celebration of Tyrone Power's 100th birthday, with the POWER-MAD Blogathon,  hosted by They Don't Make 'em Like They Used To,  and Lady Eve's Reel Life!  Click on the image below to see other blogathon writers waxing poetic about Tyrone Power!

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THE COSSACKS (Russian: Казаки - Kazaki) 1962

4/1/2014

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I feel compelled to start this review of the 1962 Russian film THE COSSACKS with a simple statement:  it's a beautiful experience.  If there was not a scrap of dialogue in the entire thing,  the pleasure of looking at each scene would have left me satisfied;  the beauty of the people and the scenery is stunning by itself...add to that a wonderful script and a stunning cast of actors,  and you have a classic movie on your hands.
PictureLeonid Gubanov as Dmitri Olenin
THE COSSACKS is based on the 1863 Leo Tolstoy novel Young Manhood which was renamed to Казаки, or Kazaki, which is Russian for 'Cossack'. Apparently the story is semi-autobiographical,  believed to be based on Tolstoy's experiences in the Caucasian war.   I read the novel many years ago, so when I saw the movie was available,  I leapt at the chance to see it.  It was made in the Soviet era by Mosfilm, the studio responsible for such Russian classics as THE BATTLESHIP POTEMPKIN,  ALEXANDER NEVSKY, and ANDREI RUBLEV.  Interestingly enough, the iconic Communist statues in the Mosfilm logo of that time are lying dismantled in an unkempt warehouse,  though the company itself has continued on...albeit with a different logo.

PictureBoris Andreyev as Eroshka
As the story begins, Young Dmitri Olenin, played by Leonid Gubanov,  is a young aristocrat living an unsatisfying life.  He has ended a romantic relationship for lack of love,  and has come to the realisation that his entire existence is basically full of staid situations and obligatory conversation.  In a brash move,  he signs up as a private in the military,  and requests a post 'defending' the remote border territories against incursions by the Chechens.  His plan?  To get as far away from that shallow life as he possibly can.

Though Dmitri has a servant, money, and status as a member of the aristocratic elite(his family knows the Tsar personally), life in the border regions is a rustic affair.  The village he takes up residence in is populated by farmers and soldiers,  and the wild ways of the Cossacks are in every aspect of life.  These are the Grebensk Cossack tribe,  who settled the region by the Terek river in the northern Caucasus.  The Grebensk Cossacks adopted the ways of the Chechen and Nogai peoples in the area, and though they kept the Russian language, they also have the spoken Nogai language, which is a Turkic language, called 'Tatar' in the film.  Dmitri is taught the Tatar greeting "Koshkildi" upon his arrival,  which I was pleasantly surprised to recognise as comparable to the Turkish "hoş geldi",  meaning,  "pleasant arrival".

This is exactly what our young idealist had been hungering for;  fresh air,  freedom,  and a chance to grow and to prove himself.  He takes up his post with relish.  He finds lodging with a  old cossack named Eroshka,  called "Daddy Eroshka" by the villagers, and they immediately form a father/son-type bond.  Daddy Eroshka takes up the task of acclimating Dmitri to Cossack life.  Very soon the beautiful Muslim village girl Maryana comes into the picture, as well as her Cossack suitor, Lukashka.  Maryana is considered the most beautiful (and inaccesible) girl in the village;  headstrong, impetuous, sure of herself and her self-worth.  Dmitri is immediately drawn to her, even as he works to form a strong friendship with the brave  fighter Lukashka...it's this love-triangle that defines the character of the story. 

I loved everything about this movie.  Zinaida Kiriyeno is amazing as the stunningly beautiful Maryana,  and Eduard Bredun(who reminds me of a young Orson Welles), gave an excellent performance as Lukashka.  They, along with Boris Andreyev as the melancholic Daddy Eroshka,  were so charismatic,  yet none of them overshadowed the others.  Leonid Gubanov,  more than any other actor in this type of role,  really brought a genuine sense of youth and romantic vision to this character.  I've met many young people like him,  who have yet to taste the realities of life in any firm way,  who see the future as full of limitless possibility.  I found myself both feeling somewhat paternal about his naivete, and perhaps a bit inspired by that hopeful spirit.

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Zinaida Kiriyenko as Maryana
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Eduard Bredun as Lukashka
PictureDmitri...the Cossack
Though this film is an oversimplification of the story in some ways,  I think that it captures the essential spirit of it;  everything is distilled into it's basic components to drive each aspect home.  I was inspired by that desire for a new and fresh life,  and I found myself longing for an earthier, more grass-roots culture to learn about and to grow into.  The contrasting reality of the situation here was also a good warning against romanticising daily life;  it made me wonder how things would have turned out if Dmitri Olenin had come with a more realistic set of expectations.

If you can find THE COSSACKS, and I hope that you can,  prepare yourself for an experience equal to any of the equivalent Hollywood classics.  I found myself wanting to watch it again, even as the final credits were rolling.

At the time of this writing,  the film can be found on Youtube HERE
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