Une Tête Brûlée

This gloriously silly "rah rah" America film was made right after the American entry in World War 2. Its a wild romp with a jerk for a lead but enough jokes action and mismatched stock footage to be a great deal of fun in the right frame of mind.

This is the story of Mike Malone an American reporter in Libya. He comes upon a plot of the Nazi's to arm the Arabs and fight the British. He steals a rifle and high tails it back to the nearest city. He crashes into the room of a nice "British" girl, leaves her the gun and then heads out the window, telling her to hide the gun from pursuing Arabs. Malone goes to the British consulate where he's thought balmy, doubly so after a visit to the girl turns up no gun. Malone then struggles to prove his story, while the British try to prevent the Arab uprising and keep an eye on the German in their midst.

This movie is very funny, often for the wrong reasons. Malone, played by Walter Woolf King, is the worst an American be: cocksure, boorish, a jerk and insufferable. He's horribly unlikeable and comes close to sinking the movie, but he doesn't mostly because he's so over inflated as to be a joke. He is nicely counter balanced by the rest of the cast who are damn near spot in their portrayals of what should be cardboard characters. Clearly they are going to go for it even if the buffoon in the middle isn't. I have to single out Harry Parke aka Parkyarkarkus, as a guy from Brooklyn posing as an Arab razor blade salesman. Parke is a joy to be hold as a calm cool man of action and witty remarks. Clearly he knows whats going on even when everyone else doesn't. The character of Parkyarkarkus was Parke's patented character from radio and he's basically doing the same shtick here to great effect. (A side note: Parke, real last name Einstein, is not only known for fathering Super Dave Osbourne and Albert Brooks, but also dropping dead in Milton Berle's lap during a Friar's roast of Lucille Ball).

Technically this movie is a mess. Clearly shot on stages and back lots, it also makes a great deal of stock footage, none of which matches any of the other footage in the film. It makes for a "bigger" movie but often surreal effect as in the case of a bar room brawl that suddenly is in a room three times the size it started in and involves ten times more people. Its funny for all the wrong reasons.

And I really liked this movie. There is something so loopy about it that made me like it infinitely more than I should have. Its not a great movie but some how the plot is involving and the knowing humor takes enough of the edge off the crappy parts that you really don't mind its low rent birth.

Worth a bucket of popcorn and a soda.

8 out of 10 if you're in the right frame of mind. 5 out of 10 if you're not.

This was released in july of 1942, so the united states had just been yanked into the war by japan. Right at the start, there's a warning about content that may be objectionable to some, but should be kept in the context of the time it was made. The only name I recognize here is hb warner, who was in so many huge films, even nominated for lost horizon. Funny guy parkyarkarkus is in here, but credited as harry einstein. When loud, blustery, newspaper reporter malone gets caught up in a mixup between the nazis and the arabs in libya, he doesn't realize the complications he has started. Malone tries to enlist the help of nancy brooks, but she's not falling for it. Mr. Forbes at the british consulate may or may not know more than he is telling. It's not the tightest story, and it was made by the producers releasing corporation, one of the lowest budget studios in the 1940s. It's very okay. I don't think anyone was too proud of this work. It rambles all over the place, and was not at all respectful to other cultures. Parkyarkarkus died pretty young at 54. Film directed by al herman. I've seen a couple of his films from the 1940s. He had made tons of short films with mickey rooney and billy barty, starting as silents in the 1920s. Fun reference to camel cigarettes about halfway through; camel cigarettes had been around since 1913!

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.

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!