Boris Karloff in The Lost Patrol, John Ford, 1934
Palate cleanser
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My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.
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Well. I’ve seen it at least. This lack of comments unnerves me. I’m not crazy about this movie though.
This image shows Boris Karloff as Sanders, a man crazed with terror and fundamentalist religious fanaticism who constantly rebukes his fellow soldies in “The Lost Patrol” in plaintive tones for their “blasphemy,” which amounts to some mild profanity and light banter about dark-skinned women with whom they’ve dallied.
Many find Karloff hammy here, and so he is, but the hamminess matches the characterization to a T and makes Sanders the most electrifying of the men.
His finale in the image above shows him yielding at long last to an ineffable vision of beatific bliss, absorbed in a private bound-for-glory rhapsody until hidden snipers shoot him down.
This shot, one of Ford’s most vivid, has found echoes in the deaths of Jeremy Irons’ devoted Jesuit in “The Mission” and Al Pacino’s insane Tony Montana in Brian De Palma’s “Scarface.”
Actually, what Dempsey’s comment reminds me is that this movie’s (pretty over-the-top in my opinion) savaging of Christian mania is, like, waaaaay stronger and more adamant than anything produced nowadays, and I’m shocked all concerned got away with it. It’s the kind of movie I’d like to show some of those right-wing whiners who claim that old Hollywood was all about piety and good morals and now we’re in some kind of degenerate phase. This movie gives the lie to that.
But yeah, it’s still kind of a mess of a movie.
Showing late tonight on TCM.
Oh shit, I love this film, and I love to show it to people who think (having read it so many times they believe it to be true) that Assault on Precinct 13 is clearly based on Rio Bravo. It’s not, it’s The Lost Patrol in the hood. Carpenter is to be thanked for steering people towards Hawks, it worked for me at least, but I still remember the shock of seeing this on afternoon TV back in the ’90s and realising – he lied!
Blogs are so interactive where we get lots o informative on any topics nice job keep it up !!