ADVENTURE IN IRAQ (1943)

A B-movie remake of the George Arliss film THE GREEN GODDESS (reviewed 3/10/04). The sets are not as opulent, and the actors are all of the second rank, but it's a fairly strong Warner Brothers second feature. Pilot Warren Douglas is flying a husband and wife (John Loder and Ruth Ford) across the desert when his plane runs out of gas and he has to land in the middle of the Iraqi desert. Loder is a dissolute fellow and his marriage seems on the verge of breaking up, so of course some mild sparks fly between the wife and the pilot, but that matter must take a back seat to survival. Luckily, they are found and taken in by Paul Cavanagh, the sheik of the village of Ghatsi. However, he has dark plans afoot, holding them hostage in hopes that his three brothers, who are about to be executed by the British as Nazi spies, will be freed. The only other major character is Cavanagh's British butler, Barry Bernard, who may or may not be sympathetic to his fellow countrymen. The plot and even individual scenes follow very closely the original movie, even down to the same closing line. Cavanagh is fine, but will not erase memories of Arliss, who was more charmingly eccentric in his take on the character. In A-movies, Loder almost always seems out of his element, but he is fine here and does a nice job as the creep whom you know will redeem himself through sacrifice by the end. Ford is good, as is the handsome Douglas. The WWII atmosphere is handled lightly: there is a reference to Douglas having been a Flying Tiger earlier in the war (though nothing is done with that), and the Nazi collaboration charges against the brothers does not extend to Cavanagh, which allows him to escape relatively unpunished at the end, as Arliss does in the original. At just under an hour, it moves along nicely. Even though this is a Warners film, it must be out of copyright because I saw it on an Alpha Video DVD; the print condition is great, which is rare for Alpha. [DVD]