For a plot, "Fort Algiers" leaves nothing to the imagination. And very little hidden. Right away, we know who the bad guy is, so there's no intrigue at all to this film. It's not very well directed or edited, and the acting is just so-so. One reason to watch it is to see Raymond Burr before he became Perry Mason and found his niche on TV. Another reviewer commented that he or she could see why he left Hollywood. Yes, it's obvious that he wasn't much of an actor. Even in these early films of his – I've watched a couple lately, his weight must be over 300 pounds.
The romance and spying in this are just plain hokey. It's not even a very good picture of life in the Foreign Legion. Yvonne de Carlo has one of her roles as a foreigner, and she probably does the best acting job for the whole film. The battle scene provides a little action but even that seems awfully stagy. The tribes must have been a few miles away when the oil field workers spotted them approaching. Once they charged at full gallop, it took forever for them to cover the ground to the oil wells. While the film quality is very good, the production values are clearly second-rate.
This just isn't a film I can recommend.
The romance and spying in this are just plain hokey. It's not even a very good picture of life in the Foreign Legion. Yvonne de Carlo has one of her roles as a foreigner, and she probably does the best acting job for the whole film. The battle scene provides a little action but even that seems awfully stagy. The tribes must have been a few miles away when the oil field workers spotted them approaching. Once they charged at full gallop, it took forever for them to cover the ground to the oil wells. While the film quality is very good, the production values are clearly second-rate.
This just isn't a film I can recommend.