Legião Sinistra

Robert Florey directed à lot of B movies and some very fine titles like "Murder in the rue Morgue", "the Beast with five fingers" (with a fantastic Peter Lorre) , "the Man behind the mask" (very original fantastic movie with again Peter Lorre, but completely forgotten) before shooting a lot of TV episodes.

This "Rogue's regiment" is perhaps not a classic but remains in the inventive visual style of Robert Florey. The introduction about the last nazis chieves is surprising. Then begins the chase of the very last unknown nazi chief by Dick Powell in Indochina in the Legion Étrangère. The cinematography is chiaroscuro with most of the sequences happening at night, very creepy atmosphere close to film noir. The casting is great with Stephen McNally frightening as the fleeing nazi and of course Vincent Price, charismatic as ever. From a story by Robert Florey, "Rogue's regiment" was written by Robert Buckner who also wrote great titles for Errol Flynn.

"Rogue's regiment" is a fine surpise.

The film follows undercover agent Dick Powell (Whit) as he tracks down fictitious Nazi Martin Brunner as portrayed by Stephen McNally (Reicher) in the French Foreign Legion in Indo-China. I assume that McNally's character is based on real life high ranking Nazi Alois Brunner and the story is a fictionalized interpretation of where real life Brunner may have gone. Incidentally, the real Brunner never got caught. Can Dick Powell track down and capture McNally, or does this story foretell the actual truth of how Brunner may have evaded his searchers?

The film begins in a documentary style with clips from the Nazi war trials before it turns its attention to the plight of one particular high-ranking Nazi who has evaded capture. We follow the leads that place him in Indo-China, and that's where we meet our cast, all of whom give good performances. My favourites are McNally and Carol Thurston, who plays devious Vincent Price's (Van Ratten) servant girl, Li-Ho-Kay. Oh yeah, she's handy with a knife.

The film seems to tie itself up rather too neatly but it is an interesting journey - there is suitable tension throughout the film as well as intrigue as to what will happen. We are taken into the world of the Vietnamese freedom fighters, who, as a separate issue, win a victory in the end, a few years later.

One of the few Foreign Legion films that takes the Legion out of the desert. The Legion was instrumental in the conquest of Indochina in the 1880s, and fought a bloody, futile war in a vain attempt to retain it, from 1946-54. In the late 40s, the French government prohibited sending conscripts to serve in Indochina, so the Foreign Legion was greatly expanded. A major falsehood presented by the film is the great effort made by former SS enlistees to conceal their past, since the French were said to execute any they discovered. The reverse was in fact true, and the French actively (though covertly) sought out and recruited former Wehrmacht and SS men. For the first time in the Legion's history, large enlistment bonuses were paid and former officers and senior noncoms were advanced to sergeant upon completion of training and a short probation period. Jobs were hard to come by in postwar Germany, and the French eagerly made use of this large pool of disciplined, fully trained professional killers. Just the thing for a dirty, distant, unpopular war.

Dick Powell joins the Legion to find a wanted SS war criminal. Despite the above, most of the movie is quite realistic and fast moving. There are good action, and even training sequences, and the atmosphere is appropriately gritty and depressing. The legionnaires are depicted with American M1 rifles. This was accurate in the early part of the war. Ironically, these were later replaced by inferior and obsolete French equipment.

An interesting mix of war movie and film noir done reasonably well.

I will remind Stephen Mc Nally's character here, where he shines as the villain, Nazi on the run. This is a great B movie, or a minor grade A picture, you can choose. It is convincing, rather fast paced, with plenty of suspense and action. I like that the screenplay focuses much of Mc Nally's role, more than I would have thought in the first place. Dick Powell is of course the hero, the good guy, I would not have imagined him as the Nazi war criminal.... This is one best example of what Robert Florey was able to do for the US film industry in those forties decade. Such a shame that he left the movie business to go to TV one, but with success, I admit. It also evokes the War in Indochia for French, but in a quite different way to David Butler and his JUMP INTO HELL.

The Nuremburg trials are nearing their end, with some Nazis being hanged and others sentenced to life imprisonment, but one criinal remains untouched. No one knows what he looks like. So they send Dick Powell after him. Since this evil man has joined the French Foreign Legion, Powell does likewise, and is sent to French Indo-China to catch what turns out to be Stephen McNally and make love to Märta Torén.

It's a capable programmer. There are battle scenes. There's Vincent Price in villain mode, expediting McNally, and the shadows grow darker and longer gradually, under the camera of the under-rated Maury Gertsman. Director Robert Florey fills the time ably; although the movie times in at 85 minutes, it never grows dull.