Fort Algiers (1953) Movie Review, Cast & Crew, Film Summary

I can’t really understate the humour value of Raymond Burr in a turban. Otherwise, spare yourself an hour and a half of boredom. You’d think a film with Yvonne De Carlo as a plucky French spy/chanteuse, plus that turban, would be entertaining, but nope. De Carlo plays a spy trying to infiltrate Berber sheikh Burr’s palace to prove he’s a provocateur trying to excite anti-imperialist agitation, and her character is fascinatingly multi-skilled, like a prototypical female James Bond, but she still plays second fiddle through much of the film to Carlos Thompson’s boring French Legionnaire/ex-lover. Some visually interesting locations, like an oil drillers’ shanty town in the middle of the desert, aren’t used for anything more than extremely tedious shooting and skulduggery.