Náufragos do Deserto

It kept me interested and entertained. Now watching it on TCM.

The US Camel Corps imported dromedary camels from the Middle-East. This flop of a movie uses bactrian camels from Mongolia.

In the American southwest deserts, camels have been left by previous expeditions. Miner Ford Smith (Wayne Morris) encounters wild local Leatherface Bates who claims that three Arabs on camels are looking to steal his gold. Mary Smith (Virginia Grey) joins Ford on his journey while the suspicious Arabs keep hanging around.

It would help if Wayne Morris gets a little dirty and dusty. This traffics in the clean-cut American couple being hounded by those dirty Arabs. This story only works if the Arabs start out without a gun. There is too little shooting and little tension. By the time that they really start shooting, the audience stops caring.

This strange little shaky A Monogram Western has Wayne Morris and Virginia Grey crossing the Alabama Hills to get to San Bernardino, pursued by three Arabs -- including George Tobias, using his Middle Eastern accent -- on camels.

The Army tried out importing camels for transportation in the Great Southwestern Desert in the 1850s. It was a brainstorm by Jefferson Davis when he was the Secretary of War. By the middle of the 1860s the Army had abandoned their use. This movie, working off Scott Darling's last script, has a couple of monologues about the critters, including their superiority in the desert.

George Blair, a B director who moved into television, seems to be directing for visuals and to bring the movie up to 70 minutes. This causes some odd pacing problems, and the action sequences seem draggy. Edward Kay's peppy score stands in odd contrast to the slow and duplicative shooting, seeming to emphasize the awkward cutting and dialogue. While Miss Grey's performance is good, Morris' line readings sound off. William Sickner's camerawork is handsome, particularly the long shots to show off the scenery in the handsome copy I saw, but the overall impact is this was a very interesting idea for a movie that was poorly realized.

Camels in western will be used later, in 1954, by Ray Nazarro's SOUTHWEST PASSAGE, starring Rod Cameron, a very unusual topic and always interesting to watch. This western may be rather ambitious for a George Blair, who usually showed us a tepid work for Republic Pictures, the most prestigious of Poverty Row companies. This movie is helped by Wayne Morris presence. Yes, yes, yes, I am surprised by the quality of this George Blair's western, as I would have been with for instance Philip Ford, Blair's fellow colleague director at Republic Pictures, both directors representing the bottom of the barrel in terms of grade Z quality. Here, that looks like a Jo Kane's film, or at best Ray Nazzaro. A good little surprise.