Hey all. This week's offering is a black & white comedy from the respected duo of Abbott & Costello. In the interest of fairness, you should know that I've seen Meet Frankenstein and Meet The Invisible Man. Having seen those two classics, I had a strong suspicion that In the Foreign Legion wasn't gonna do much for me. And I was right. But first thing's first.
The basic plot of In the Foreign Legion is this: Bud and Lou are a couple of wrestling promoters staging a fixed fight. One of their wrestlers, Abdullah the Assassin, decides to return to his native Algiers rather than lose. Bud and Lou, desperate to avoid the local gambling fixer and get the money back that they gave Abdullah, follow their man to Algiers. What Bud and Lou don't know is that Abdullah is cousin to Sheik Hamud, an Arab who is menacing a local railroad construction site for protection money with the help of Legion Sergeant Axmann. In Algiers, one of the Sheik's men overhears Bud and Lou talking about Abdullah and mistakes them for American agents of the rail company. Hijinks ensue as Bud and Lou try to avoid assassination attempts only to end up seeking protection at the Foreign Legion (recruited by Axmann, who believes he's got them right where he wants them). Once in the Legion, Bud and Lou are roped into spying on Axmann by Nicole, a French spy posing as a slave girl. Nicole believes Axmann and the Sheik are going to blow up the rail station. Axmann catches them and sends them out into the desert, where they deal with hallucinations and an oasis occupied by a clever fish. Bud and Lou are captured by the Sheik's men (as is Nicole) and they are forced to wrestle for the Sheik's entertainment. Luckily one of their opponents is Abdullah, who is desperate to return to the U.S. Bud and Lou escape, then lead the Sheik's men on a merry chase to the rail station already rigged to explode by the Sheik's men. The station explodes and wins an unintentional victory for Bud and Lou. Our heroes are given honorable discharge from the Legion, and Lou rides out with a jeep full of harem girls.
Sadly, I found very little to like about In the Foreign Legion. The problem with Abbott and Costello is that they're very repetitive. I can only take Lou doing the "breathless babbling fear" thing so many times, and the over-the-top nature of that schtick worked for me in the Meet Universal Monster only because of the monstrous context. There's some of the "who's on first" wordplay stuff going on that's funny, but old hat. A few of the more standout gag sequences started out funny and enjoyable but went on for entirely too long. I found myself getting incredibly impatient with these routines, rolling my eyes when they hit the five minute mark. I couldn't remember if this was a problem with Laurel and Hardy, so I bent one of my rules for these reviews. I Googled "Laurel and Hardy vs Abbott and Costello". What I discovered, which only supports my reaction, was that many of the other vaudeville-style comedy teams felt Abbott and Costello were lazy with their movie work. Additionally, Universal was strangely strict about having Bud and Lou stick to the script, whereas they were free to ad-lib on their radio show. Many of the gags in this film felt like they were funny ideas dragged out to fill time, which makes sense given what I'd read.
Structurally, In the Foreign Legion suffers from the same Foreign Legion problem as the prior two films as well as problems stemming from the required "schtick, exposition, schtick" stucture inherent to vaudeville-style films. We get a half hour (out of 79 minutes) of setting up the circumstances to get Bud and Lou in the Legion, then we get a few gag scenes, then an enormous desert-hallucination-oasis gag sequence, then a few more gag scenes, then the end. It works okay, I suppose, but it feels lazy and rote. This isn't helped any by the fact that I'd seen many of the gags before in Looney Tunes cartoons. One might say that it isn't fair of me to compare the two given the disparate formats, but I'd counter that the Looney Tunes usage works BECAUSE the format is short. Again, I can't stress enough how boring these gags got too far out from the premise.
There isn't much character work to speak of given the fact that this is an Abbott and Costello picture. Like any vaudeville team movie, the characters here are the team. The names might be different, but Bud is Bud and Lou is Lou. In some ways this is actually kind of nice because you know what to expect. You don't have to waste time establishing characters, you can get right into the comedy. The problem? Yeah, not to get pedantic, but the problem is that the comedy didn't work for me.
In the interest of fairness again, I want to say something about comedy team bias. This phenomenon does exist and you can witness it with just about any fans of the form. In the battle royal that is vaudeville-style comedy-team film, I will always and forever side with the Marx Brothers. I enjoy Laurel and Hardy, I like the Abbott and Costello monster movies, and when I was a kid I was obsessed with Jerry Lewis in the Martin and Lewis movies (though I couldn't for the life of me tell you now which ones I watched). But for me, the pinnacle of vaudeville-style hilarity is Groucho Marx making a ridiculously mean joke at Margaret Dumont's expense while Chico flubs his english and Harpo pulls a dog out of his jacket pocket.
- As with the prior films, here's a list of random thoughts during the movie:
- Good gag with the wrestling audience on vinyl.
- I wonder if the notion of a fixed wrestling match was more scandalous back then.
- Abdullah is so freaking hairy! He's like George the Animal Steele! Is that common in men from Algiers?
- Bud's pants are up to his neck. hahaha.... olde tyme fashionne
- Good gag with the woman who has 3 kids. Bud: They don't do that (sex) here. Lou: They don't? Then that woman's in the wrong country.
- Holy shit, I can see the seams in the backdrops! And the lighting is awful. Did they even try?
- hahahahaha... some of these Arabs and Frenchmen sound awfully British. Like a Python sketch.
- This slave trader sounds like Jackie Mason.
- Jesus jumped up Christ. I know it's a comedy, but this is so damn stupid. Who in their right mind would give the fat, stupid American who barely made it out of the obstacle course access to the machine gun nest? This is the kind of forced "humorous" situation that makes me HATE comedy writers.
- The fish that steals the old guy's teeth? Batshit insane but incredibly funny!
- hahahahaha... OH SHIT!!! It's Tor Johnson as one of the Sheik's wrestlers! This is clearly the best scene of the whole film. Ridiculous.
I forgot to do this with Legionnaire, but as far as relating to the theme of "Foreign Legion" goes I'm afraid In the Foreign Legion is a gigantic FAIL. The Foreign Legion has nothing at all to do with this narrative. It's barely a backdrop since the boys go to Algiers to get back Abdullah, not to join the Legion. And once they're in the Legion, they get kicked out almost immediately. Crazy considering the title, yeah?
Okay, there you have it. I wouldn't recommend this movie to most people, though maybe if you're a fan of Abbott and Costello you should give it a chance. Personally, I'd say you're better off giving their monster movies a viewing. Or find one of their old radio shows where the banter is a bit more natural and the gags less drawn out.
Until next time, which I believe is the last for the Foreign Legion theme!
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