Une Tête Brûlée

This film is an example of what a low budget "B" film can be like. "A Yank In Libya" is one of those more classic B films amongst movie buffs, as well known for its title as it is for being a "poverty row" film. The film was produced and released by PRC, Producers Releasing Company. Intercut in the film are numerous scenes taken directly from other films, by doing this it was a cost saving measure. Also several scenes, such as the fight scenes were speeded up, much in the way old silent comedies were run at a faster speed.

The film has an interesting plot where Germans are supplying weapons to Arabs to murder Americans. H.B. Warner has a great supporting role playing the British diplomat. He is best knoiwn for having played Christ in the biblical silent epics. Joan Woodbury plays an attractive lead, in real life she was the wife of Henry Wilcoxon. Parkyakarkus, a radio actor of the time essentially plays himself. If you have no idea who he is, he looks, sounds and acts like Jack Oakie. Walter Woolf King essentially plays the male lead, and does a good job.

It definitely fits the time period as the Axis & Allies were playing espionage games throughout most of North Africa & the rest of the world. It's not the best of films, but certainly not the worst of the budget films as described previously from the compilation War Classics.

Duncan"Cisco Kid" Renaldo was actually very good in one of his first feature films. I really enjoyed the performance of Harry Parke (credited as Parkyarkarkus). Why he never got any bigger roles is beyond me. He played the perfect buddy/partner role and saved the movie...imho.

As said, this film was part of a budget package from Superbox-Mart entitled War Classics. Eight movies for eight bucks, which included other never-heard-from-films that has some decent stars trying to pay the bills.

This script is...well, not so hot. The editing & cinematography is...worse. If you can by-pass all of that and want to see the future Cisco Kid & a great sidekick that sadly never fulfilled his true potential, definitely pick it up! Otherwise, there's other WW2 films to watch.

-Thunderossa.

Although this film stars H.B. Warner, he is certainly not the central character, that role being fulfilled by Walter Woolf King, a little known actor, who portrays an American war correspondent who has unearthed a Nazi plot to foment a rebellion among the Arab tribes. In fact, Warner's part is rather minor. The story is pedestrian but the acting is good. There is not much big action, the only scenes promising it being at the end of the film, but, it doesn't come off. The chief of the attacking Arabs, making a sudden recovery from a Luger bullet at close range, prevents it. It turns out a small medallion on his chest stopped the bullet!

Neither Leonard Maltin nor Martin and Porter list this film in their filmograhies. I got it on DVD in a budget set of eight "War Classics". The plot of a Nazi conspiracy to foment a revolt of the Arab tribes in Libya is the nearest it gets to WWII. The sheik is played by Duncan Renaldo, perhaps better known as the Cisco Kid both in film and on TV. The Arab villain is portrayed by the prolific George J. Lewis with whom any fan of serials would be familiar, being a stock villain in that genre. He only appeared in about 260 films! Some comic relief is supplied by Parkyakarkas posing as an Arab selling razor blades!

Mike Malone is an obnoxious and stupid American reporter who, inexplicably, is hanging out under cover in Libya! He's boorish and stupid--which is a nice match, as all the rest of the folks in the film are really dumb. Because of this, the whole gun smuggling and Nazi infiltrator angles just don't make a lot of sense and the film leaves you wondering WHAT you've just seen! "A Yank in Libya" is a horrible movie and I have no idea why most of the reviews are so kind to this mess of a film. The only good thing about it is that the film can be fun to watch because it is so incredibly stupid!

When the movie begins, you can see that the footage they're using of a desert scene is old re-used footage. It's grainy but more importantly, since it was from a silent film (which runs at a different speed than a sound film) the footage is too fast. As you watch the film, again and again you notice this, as the filmmakers actually just spliced up an old movie and inserted a few new scenes into it to make an all-new picture. Clever? Not really, as it's very obvious AND the new scenes are just god-awful--mostly due to the script having been written by a couple of chimps! Again and again, the dialog is just awful (a nice example is the line "why I'd be a cock-eyed whirling dervish...") and the plot just doesn't make any sense (one guy is shot from only a few feet away and is dead...but later, with no explanation, he's very alive and quite well!). The bottom line is that this terrible B-movie is so terrible that it actually could be seen as funny to bad movie buffs- -but all others stay clear!

You don't expect much from a PRC picture, and with rare exceptions--mainly from Edgar G. Ulmer and a few by Joseph H. Lewis or Lew Landers--that's exactly what you get: not much. This "epic" about Nazis in Africa trying to incite an Arab revolt against the British isn't much different. The script, by longtime PRC hacks Arthur St. Claire and Sherman Lowe, is trite, laughable, full of unfunny "wisecracks" and plot holes the size of Outer Mongolia. The direction, by longtime PRC no-budget specialist Al Herman, is semi-comatose at best. The performances, though--except for spectacularly incompetent and irritatingly hammy lead Walter Woolf King--aren't really half bad. Veteran comedian Parkyakarkus is actually the best thing about the film. He plays a guy from Brooklyn masquerading as a razor-blade salesman and brightens up the screen considerably when he shows up. He's got great comic timing, charm to spare and seems to be having a heck of a good time. Duncan Renaldo is fairly convincing as an Arab sheik--despite his Spanish accent--and veteran bad guy George J. Lewis as Renaldo's Arab rival does his usual fine job of villainy, even if he goes a bit over the top sometimes. Joan Woodbury is quite pretty and has a nice light touch, and she and Renaldo have great chemistry together, although--like the rest of the cast--she has none at all with King. H.B. Warner, whose career stretched back to the silent era, lends a shred of dignity to the low-rent proceedings, even though he blows his lines several times and, PRC being PRC, they weren't cut out. There's a great deal of stock footage spliced in from a big-budget silent movie with a similar Arab theme--although I have no idea which one it is--and, PRC being PRC, no effort was made to try to make it inconspicuous: I've seldom seen stock footage that was so blatantly obvious.

"A Yank in Libya" isn't very good, of course--well, OK, it stinks--but it would be worth a look just to see Parkyakarkus in his prime. I had heard of him and knew that he was the father of actor/director Albert Brooks and Super Dave Osborne, but had never actually seen him in anything before. It was worth watching this tenth-rate PRC "extravaganza" just to see him in action. Otherwise, forget it.