Scorching Sands

"Scorching Sands" is clearly not a P.C. Wren spoof. It was released a year before the novel "Beau Geste" was published and three years before the movie with Ronald Colman was produced. Instead, it's an overt parody of Ouida's "Under Two Flags." This novel had already been filmed several times by the time Stan Laurel spoofed it and audiences would have had no trouble recognizing the source of his parody. In "Scorching Sands," Laurel finds himself torn between a beautiful society lady and a "sweetheart of the Legion," who is clearly modeled on Cigarette, the girl played in various film versions by Theda Bara and Claudette Colbert, among others. Much of the short consists of standard military-themed gags that don't parody any specific picture, but the inspiration of the film is "Under Two Flags" without a doubt.

It's a gag comedy from 1923 that makes fun of the French Foreign Legion Stories of P.C. Wren.... or at least uses them as a jumping-off point. Stan shows up at a Foreign Legion post in a high-crowned hat, jacket and heavy mascara blotches under the eyes. He enlists, and then has a series of short comic takes which are executed with vigor, but not too much interest. He can't march in line with other legionaires, he squirts everyone with ten gallons of champagne from a bottle, he is sentenced to be shot and uses his blindfold to blow his nose.

All of them are good gags, and were they strung together with plot or characterization, this would be a nice little comedy. Unhappily, they are not: things just happen. Perhaps it is because this print lacks most of its title cards. Mr. Laurel was still learning how to construct a film comedy at this point and it shows. Look at BEAU HUNKS instead.

It is highly improbable that Roach studios would have made two parodies, both starring Stan Laurel and Katharine Grant, of Tod Browning's 1922 film version of the Ouida novel Under Two Flags. This entry would seem to be a ghost and, despite the different details provided, to be exactly the same film as Under Two Jags. Under whichever name it is a rather unfunny parody.

As regards the casts it seems more likely that the director was George Jeske who directed most of the Laurel parodies at this time.