Brennpunkt Algier

It's been well over a year since I had mentioned I'd be renting this one on DVD, after being impressed with Lesley Selander's neglected low-budget horror effort THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST (1945). At the time, I had even joked about the fact that the director's filmography included six(!) pictures with the word "fort" in their title – this, of course, being one of them.

Despite the lowly rating, I enjoyed the film for what it was – a thoroughly unassuming romantic adventure. Its B-movie roots are evident in the ample stock footage (particularly during the final desert charge on an oil well – which also presents an incongruity in wardrobe, with heroes and villains dressed in outfits from different time periods!) but also the choice of leading man, Carlos Thompson: the Argentinian actor made only a handful of English-language films (none very notable, though his last film was the delightful French WWII comedy LA VIE DE Château [1966] with Catherine Deneuve) and committed suicide back home in 1990.

Anyway, FORT ALGIERS was really a vehicle for Yvonne De Carlo, who specialized in such forgettable exotic fare around this time; here, she's a French agent who had forsaken lover Thompson for 'the cause' – but meets up with him again when she's sent to spy on evil Arab potentate Raymond Burr (highly amusing in a turban). Leif Erickson delivers an unbelievably hammy performance as Thompson's arrogant sergeant – though his character is eventually softened when selected for the hero's buddy in a mission (in which Thompson has to rescue De Carlo from Burr when the girl's cover is blown); the rest of the cast includes such familiar faces as John Dehner, Anthony Caruso and Robert Warwick.

Imagine the tired excitement of those fleapit cinemas in back streets all over the UK watching this dross and having to have paid money for the experience. Did it ever open in cinemas in the centre of cities ? I wonder. Films like this were churned out, with bad acting, bad cinematography with appalling regularity and this one epitomises all of them. Yvonne de Carlo was never that good; here she is appalling and opposite her is Carlos Thompson, a handsome actor who had nothing to offer on screen except his looks. I am perhaps one of the few who saw him in the now lost ' The Flame and the Flesh ' with Lana Turner and there by the sheer force of gravity of Turner's performance he adequately responded. Here Yvonne de Carlo does not give him the same rope of rescue, and he flounders in limp gestures and clichés. Thanks to the ' Talking Pictures ' channel we the public are often allowed to return to these fleapit films and I guess for some there is a sentimental value in watching these primitive films. One star for their strange fascination. The depressed, the lonely and the young lovers would go to see them and tawdry films like these would replace their different realities with double bills of cynically made inadequacy.

The usual desert hokum, with a noisy woodwind score by Michel Michelet (that bursts into piano at the end) but a budget that didn't run to colour; but fortunately embellished by elegantly stylised sets (probably left over from previous productions) lit to heighten their impact by master cameraman John Seitz (plus cool second unit work).

Top-billed Yvonne de Carlo as a glamorous spy photographs well in black & white (as 'The Munsters' later demonstrated), has a fabulous wardrobe and can ride a horse, while a good supporting cast - including Raymond Burr as a villainous Emir - keep straight faces.

This adventure movie proves that Lesley Selander was not only a western film maker. Ok, this movie is told, written and acted as a western; just replace Arabs by Indians and Foreign Legion by the US Cavalry. Remember Selander's DESERT SANDS, another French Foreign Legion film. The exotic part is present, despite a black and white photography, such a shame, especially with a superb Yvonne De Carlo in a Mata Hari like character. Raymond Burr is outstanding as the evil guy; how could it be else? This movie belongs to the French Foreign legion ones and that makes me think one more time of my grief concerning DESERT HELL, from director Charles Marquis Warren. A so rare film that no one seems to have ever seen it. The review on Imdb looks very like the copycat of a dictionnary comment.

There's murky and nasty goings-on in French Africa, stirred up by tuxedo-and-turban-wearing Raymond Burr. Yvonne De Carlo is blackmailed into going undercover there, and she soon has Burr greatly interested. What -- or rather, whom -- Miss De Carlo is being blackmailed over is former Signal Corps officer Carlos Thompson, who nearly killed a superior officer, presumably over Miss De Carlo. Now he is a private in the French Foreign Legion.

Miss De Carlo is top-billed, and she gets more screen time than anyone else. She also sings a song as part of her cover. It's the sort of engaging nonsense that still filled the movie screens at this point. Supposedly this UA release was filmed in Morocco. If so, they took pains to find geographical features that are exact duplicates to those around Lone Pine, Mount Whitney, and other sites in California that any fan of cheap B westerns would recognize, as well as a derelict wooden structure that looks like something out of those same oaters. Still, it's fun to find such typical Bedouins and Rif riff-raff as John Dehner, Leif Erickson, and Robert Warwick.