Gutsycurene Fanciful, disturbing, and wildly original, it announces the arrival of a fresh, bold voice in American cinema.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

BelSports This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Rio Hayward All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

sol1218 **SPOILERS*** Just about to go on leave French Foreign Legionnaire Capt. Paul Gerard, George Raft, gets the news from his boss Col. Pascal, John Litel, to escort a company of legionnaires to the far off French outpost, some 12 days of traveling on horseback, Bel-Rashad and transports the Emir Al-Rashad's, Eduard Franz, beautiful non Arabic looking daughter Cara, Marie Windsor, there for her usually off-season, when the weather is cooler, stay! What Col. Pascal is worried about is that instead of October, when it's cool and pleasant, when Cara visits her father the Emir this time it's in mid-June! The hottest time of he year for that desert town!The French are suspicious that the Emir has been supplied with thousands of modern and highly effective, unlike the 19 century muskets that his men have, German Mauser rifles! And with those modern arms he's planning to start a revolt all over French Morocco and end up throwing the French out. Something he's been dreaming about for years and now is finally able to make that dream come true! Unknown to the Emir Capt. Gerard has gotten his daughter to fall madly in love with him by his dancing ability that has her now going to great lengths, like hiding him in the privacy of her boudoir, in protecting him from her fathers men.It's when Capt. Gerard uncovers, by going undercover, the fact that the Emir had the means, the Mausers, to cause real trouble for his French occupiers that he, by the skin of his teeth, makes it back to headquarters and Col. Pascal with the news. That turns out to be a bit too late for the French Foreign Legion unite, some 100 legionnaires, at Bel-Rashad who ends up getting slaughtered by the Emir men before help could arrive!***SPOILERS*** With thousands of the Emir's horsemen now moving on the main French Foreign Legion outpost outside Bel-Rashad Morocco it's up to Capt. Gerard and his trustful sidekick Let. Glysko, Akim Tamiroff, who always wears in clean shirt in combat so if he gets killed he'll end up being buried with it wait for the inevitable end as the charge of the "Mauser Rifles", some 10,000 strong, is about to begin!**MAJOR SPOILER*** Just when things look like they can't get any worse Cara, in what looked like a fit of insanity, jumps on an Arabian Stallion and takes off to the far off desert battlefield in order to stop her father the Amir from doing in her lover Capt. Gerard and the men he's in charge of. Starting way behind but, with her excellent riding ability, getting to the front of the charge Cara ends up getting blasted together with her father the Emir by a volley of French cannon fire and dynamite explosions! The ironic thing about all this is that Capt. Gerard never knew what Cara's motives were since, by being killed, she wasn't around to tell him.

MartinHafer This is an odd film from the onset due to the odd casting choices. First, having an older (and decidedly lazier) George Raft in the romantic lead seemed silly, though most of his manly roles at this point his his career seemed to think he was 10-15 years younger. Second, and this is the most serious, who would have thought that Marie Windsor could look like the Emir's daughter?! She looks about as North African as Zsa Zsa Gabor and sounded like a débutante! The film begins with Raft being asked to go on a special mission to escort the sultry Ms. Windsor to her father at his fortress. Why was Raft chosen? Well, according to the film he is some sort of super-stud ladies' man and the Commanding Officer wanted Raft to romance Windsor and get her "on our side"!! Really. I'm not making this up, folks! George Raft is a major stud in this film(!). Naturally, at first they don't get along but then later they are quite snuggly (a standard cliché in such films). When she discovers that her Daddy, the Emir, is a nasty jerk, she helps Raft. What a dame. Well, more like what an anachronistic dame--one who acts like no woman in her situation would have acted like.After the romantic stuff, the film becomes a movie about French Foreign Legion troops being besieged in the desert--like BEAU GESTE, ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION, BEAU HUNKS and a dozen other films. NO surprises here and it looks almost like a slow motion and dull version of the standard "White man in the desert" film.

Robert J. Maxwell I tried to count the number of times George Raft, Cavalry Captain in the French Foreign Legion in Morocco, in the early years of the 20th century, blinked, but I didn't see any blinks at all. I wouldn't advance the proposition that George Raft never blinks in this movie. That's not it at all. It's just that I never caught him at it. Possibly because I blinked myself.Why, man, he doth bestride this narrow movie like s Colossus astride Rhodes. He wears the same expression, whether making love or shooting rebels. He looks grim always. He moves purposefully. Everything he is involved in generates the same contour of his facial muscles and, as in a Kuleshov experiment, we interpret it according to context.Excuse me for making a little fun of George Raft. He actually suits the role and the movie pretty well. It's an unpretentious and action-filled, mostly studio-bound, story of proud French soldiers opposing a conflicted culture of Islamic colonials. A leader of one tribe, Eduard Franz, is pretty hostile to the French presence. So much so that he wipes out one of their outposts, despite some friendly gestures on the part of the French. At the same time, Eduard Franz has a very pretty and sensual daughter, Marie Windsor, she of the large and doe-like eyes and a mouth that bespeaks passion. Raft has delivered her from the city to her father's oasis and they have fallen in love with each other. (Over an enormous bowl of rice.) The two of them are torn between their conflicting allegiances. Windsor has been to some extent Westernized. She's been away from the tribe long enough to have acquired one of those pointed brassieres that were to become so common in 1950s movies. Not that she needs it. She's superbly feminine and nubile beyond measure. Raft too is torn between his love for her -- his enemy's daughter -- and his commitment to La France, though he never seriously wavers.I don't want to spell out the end, but it really is a little confusing. Eduard Franz's cavalry make a suicidal line-abreast charge against a fortified position that has automatic weapons. Somehow, Marie Windsor gets mixed up in the ruckus and the conflict between enlightened Westerners and benighted tribesmen is resolved.Without being sure why, I can say that I quite enjoyed it -- the stereotypes, the shootings, the battles, the galloping horses, the eyeballs of Marie Windsor, the Russian slurring of English by Akim Tamirov. I think maybe I had OD'd on political arguments and the economic calamity that happened on the day I watched this, but -- whatever -- I loved the action and the mindlessness.All in all, a splendid way to take your mind off things.

occupant-1 This effort shows that, if Raft and Windsor had had better luck of the draw, he may have gotten more light romantic lead parts (rather than tough guy things) and she might have done Kubrick-style films more and science fiction less. Raft shows a flair for underplayed humor and Windsor, clearly no fool, outclasses the usual female leads (she later served as a director of the Screen Actors Guild).