It is obvious as to why Raymond Burr would give up his screen villainy for T.V. heroism as Perry Mason (and later Ironside) after all the rogues he played in a variety of film noir and action films. He is the most silly of all Arab sheiks, obviously as American as John Wayne and certainly no threat to Conrad Veidt who played the greatest of all Arab villains in the classic "Thief of Bagdad".
This isn't a fantasy, however. It is a bread and butter action picture where the French Foreign Legion is called in to become involved in a battle between the evil Burr and the natives who live in fear of him. It is also a bit of a spy thriller with the beautiful Yvonne De Carlo caught in the middle between Burr and her old lover (Carlos Thompson) whom she believed to be dead. A film like this with a woman as beautiful as De Carlo cries for Technicolor, yet it lacks the camp potential of her earlier cult classics "Salome, Where She Danced" and "Song of Scherezade" and ends up being rather ordinary.
There's also a silly rivalry set up between Thompson and the rather obnoxious Leif Erickson as the Foreign Legion sergeant who demands "gifts" from his recruits for his "friendship" that just seems to go nowhere. While the pacing of the film is never slow and the song that De Carlo sings (which she also wrote) isn't bad, the overall impact of the movie is "So What?". It's fortunate that De Carlo had better luck with other action films and westerns, because if they had been more like this one, we never would have gotten to hear her originate that classic Broadway standard, "I'm Still Here". Like the show that song comes from, this one of her rare career "Follies".
This isn't a fantasy, however. It is a bread and butter action picture where the French Foreign Legion is called in to become involved in a battle between the evil Burr and the natives who live in fear of him. It is also a bit of a spy thriller with the beautiful Yvonne De Carlo caught in the middle between Burr and her old lover (Carlos Thompson) whom she believed to be dead. A film like this with a woman as beautiful as De Carlo cries for Technicolor, yet it lacks the camp potential of her earlier cult classics "Salome, Where She Danced" and "Song of Scherezade" and ends up being rather ordinary.
There's also a silly rivalry set up between Thompson and the rather obnoxious Leif Erickson as the Foreign Legion sergeant who demands "gifts" from his recruits for his "friendship" that just seems to go nowhere. While the pacing of the film is never slow and the song that De Carlo sings (which she also wrote) isn't bad, the overall impact of the movie is "So What?". It's fortunate that De Carlo had better luck with other action films and westerns, because if they had been more like this one, we never would have gotten to hear her originate that classic Broadway standard, "I'm Still Here". Like the show that song comes from, this one of her rare career "Follies".