La légion du Sahara

Desert Legion was Alan Ladd's second film after leaving his nurturing studio of Paramount. It was hoped he would get better parts by his agent and wife Sue Carol. But sad to say this was the run of film he got.

It's a typical action potboiler with Alan Ladd in the French Foreign Legion on patrol and in pursuit of a local Algerian bandit who no one can seem to locate. On patrol one day after a couple of raiders, Ladd and his patrol are surprised by reinforcements who come from out of nowhere and everyone is killed, but Ladd. He wakes up and finds desert princess Arlene Dahl nursing him back to health. The next thing he knows he's back at Legion headquarters with this wild tale of a lost city in the desert.

Ever since Universal made Arabian Nights with Jon Hall and Maria Montez they had these middle eastern sets and so you could depend year after year on one or two pictures with that setting. So on this one shot deal Alan Ladd got to do Desert Legion with those same sets.

Maureen O'Hara in her memoirs said no one thought she was more ludicrous cast in these films as a redheaded Middle Eastern princess. But I will say that Desert Legion did provide some explanation why redheaded Swede Arlene Dahl was in North Africa.

Had this film been done a decade earlier it might have made great material for a serial. It has all the ingredients and you just write a bunch cliffhanger semi-climaxes and it would have done well.

Looking like he's having a great old time is Akim Tamiroff as Ladd's sidekick who deserts with him to find this lost city. Richard Conte however just doesn't come off as an Arab.

Desert Legion is the kind of film Alan Ladd should have been done with at his stage of life and career.

A Legionnaire's regiment patrols the Algerian mountains in North Africa. They are trying to locate the leader of a gang of killers, Omar Ben Kalif. As they travel along the mountains they are ambushed by Kalif' and his soldiers. Incredibly the Legionnaires become surrounded as if Kalif's men have come straight out of the mountain. Only one Legionnaire survives the ambush, Captain Lartal (Alan Ladd), but he is badly injured. He wakes for a few moments to see a beautiful woman (Arlene Dahl), who says she needs his help. He loses consciousness and later wakes to find himself being rescued by a Legionnaire patrol. He tells his story to his commanding officer, but no one will believe his tale of the beautiful woman.

Captain Lartal decides to find the mysterious woman and also get revenge on Kalif. He and a partner (Akim Tamiroff) make their way to the city. There, they meet a stranger who takes them on a journey to the mountains. The stranger takes them through a secret passage that leads to a hidden city. There Captain Lartal meets the beautiful woman. Her father, Si Khalil, rules the city with ideals of peace and brotherhood. But there is an uprising brewing within and violence is feared. Captain Lartal is asked to help stop the violent uprising. The rebel leader is Damou, a man determined to lead the city by his own values.

I thought it was a great little movie. The color is rich, the scenes beautifully shot. The score really added to my enjoyment of the film. The acting was delightful. Ladd and Conte, 40 and 43 respectively, are fit and vibrant. Dahl is extremely beautiful. And the character roles played by Tamiroff, Anthony Caruso and Oscar Beregi are top notch. It's an adventure film aimed at a younger audience and it packs a punch.

Another trip to the ex-village sexton/film buff yielded a pleasant evening of movie talk and viewing – in this particular case, the former being more rewarding than the latter in view of the fact that the 25-year old print of the obscure Alan Ladd vehicle DESERT LEGION was so washed out as to belie its having been originally shot in "glorious Technicolor"! Indeed, the only color scheme prevalent throughout the screening was a reddish hue that, more than anything else, is a tell-tale sign that a celluloid print is well past its "best before" date. But, as if that was not disheartening enough, the film kept sticking in the projector, making the image jump up and down, requiring our host to make his expert manual interventions a handful of times. For better or worse, the film we were watching was a routine star actioner that even I was unaware of before seeing its worn poster proudly displayed during the latest exhibition of such rare items held regularly for the public by our host. The script requires the viewer to accept diminutive Ladd as a formidable Legionnaire who possesses the only credentials to capture a renegade Arab rebel (played by one of the least likely actors suited for this role, Richard Conte!) that has been preying on their sentries and save the mythical Shangri-La-like community of Medara, buried deep within the desert, from his evil clutches. For support, Ladd only has his old, tale-spinning buddy Akim Tamiroff, while the inevitable love interest is provided by Arlene Dahl – with Universal clearly believing that the audience would not have anyone but another statuesque Arabic redhead (a' la Maureen O'Hara) for a leading lady!! Despite the intermittent sprinkling of intriguing ideas – Ladd is abducted by the mysterious Dahl and taken to her hidden abode in clear imitation of Pierre Benoit's much-filmed "L'Atlantide"; the two confrontations between Ladd and Conte are both unconventional in nature and setting: in the arena with the two contestants sharing one spear between them and, the climactic one, atop a mountain's rock-face – this particular mix, unfortunately, fails to rise to any particularly memorable or even satisfactory level…which makes the possibility of a future revisit via superior elements highly improbable!

While searching in the Algerian desert for a bandit, a Foreign Legion patrol is led into an ambush. The sole survivor is Captain Lartal who, after being wounded, recovers consciousness to find someone has taken him to the gates of the Legion post.

In solving the mystery, Legionnaire Alan Ladd discovers a lost city, the beautiful Arlene Dahl and a villainous Richard Conte.

Desert Legion is a romantic desert fantasy (photographed in Technicolor) with a dreamy feel like Lost Horizion. The fabled city of Mardala is sort of a shangri-la, a place where a red-haired Beauty lives. This is quite an entertaining picture and as I have a hankering for for old-fashioned predictable outdoor action movies with a cartoon-like villain and a heroic stalwart hero amidst the desert landscape. It can be a bit too languid in pace, and needed a pick me up mid-way, but it's entertaining on the whole. There's a tense spear throwing sequence. It ends with an exciting action finale.

I enjoy watching Alan Ladd films but I still will be the first to admit that his choice of acting assignments was often suspect. For every exceptional film he made like "This Gun for Hire" or "Shane", he made a half a dozen movies that were essentially B-movies with A- movie budgets. So, they look great but are pretty much mindlessly entertaining...and that's how I see "Desert Legion".

When the film begins, French Foreign Legionnaire Paul Lartal is in command of troops who are attacked and massacred in the desert. Somehow Lartal is knocked unconscious and spared. When he awakens he sees a sexy redhead (sure, there must be millions of them in the North African desert) and then he lapses back out of consciousness...and now finds himself with the Legion. His superiors think he's imagining seeing the sexy redhead (Arlene Dahl) but when he realizes it must be true, he takes off looking for the hidden city of Madara, as the hot redhead, the Princess, needs his help. There he must fight against the evil Crito (Richard Conte) who is an amazingly jerky jerk! Lartal gets locked in mortal combat with Crito and spares him...and almost instantly Crito tries to kill him! What's next? See the film...or not.

If you're looking for an excellent Foreign Legion pic, I suggest you keep looking. This one is just silly with redheads and none of the Madarans looking even remotely North African. Overall, it's once again Ladd going through the motions to pick up a paycheck and it's far from his best work.