Ten Tall Men (film review)

                                                       Ten Tall Men (film review)

I found myself watching this on Spanish TV yesterday

This is a 1951 adventure movie made in the US, one of a number of light hearted "boys own adventures" which made Burt Lancaster a big star.

Originally written as a western with US Cavalry Vs Apache, but Lancaster and the producer Harold Hecht decided to change the theme to one based on the adventures of the French Foreign Legion and writer A. I. Bezzerides reimagined the script based during the Rif War in Morocco; later more light hearted, comedic elements were added.

                                                                                Plot

The film has a fairly simple plot, after striking his superior officer, American Sergeant Mike Kincaid leads a band of jailbirds including the wonderful Gilbert Roland to disrupt the plans of the evil Riff Caid Hussein.

Gilbert Roland

He captures the daughter of another Shiek played by Jody Lawrence - who is to be married to Hussein, joining the two tribes together for a war against the French! The Legionnaires lead Hussein and his Rifs a merry chase through the hills and desert until Kincaid sacrifices himself to allow his remaining men to escape.

Princess Mahla has fallen for the handsome soldier and demands his release in return for marrying Hussein, he reluctantly agrees, but sends two of his men to kill Kincaid. 

His men turn out to be Kincaid`s own corporals in disguise, the whole group have returned to rescue their sergeant! Kincaid leads his group to disrupt the wedding and in the resulting mayhem kills Hussein and foiling the planned attack.

The film ends with Kincaid being decorated by the very officer he hit and getting the girl.

                                                                 Historic acuraccy  

First off the opening scene at Tarfa claims it is the HQ of the 42nd Regiment of the Legion (they never had 42 regiments), but also everytime we see a Legionnaire in uniform his collar tabs are clearly marked "2" - 2nd Regiment (rather sloppy error), then the Legionnaires are seen wearing the long blue coat which would be OK for the pre-WW1 era, but later no. 

 Weapons and gear are fine - the Legionnaires have Lebel type rifles and leather webbing, they even get a 1914 Hotchkiss machine gun, which we see packed on a horse and firing using ammo strips! We do however see in one scene a wrecked truck, which turns out to be a Legion payroll transport captured by the Riffi - this once again confuses us as to the date? Motorised transport would not have been around pre-WW1 and to be honest was pretty rare into the early 1920s.

The Riffi are actually dressed as Arab Bedouin and whilst this is not totally silly, it doesn`t feel right.The Riffi mostly appear to have Jazails, though by 1911 and certainly later more modern breech loaders would have been the norm, particularly among leaders bodyguards, etc. There is a nice scene where the Riffi use hand-made grenades of dynamite tied to wooden sticks 😄 

Conclusion

Fun film, if you can ignore the Hollywood sillyness, the plot would be highly usable for a small scale skirmish game.