It would have been a nice gesture (Get it, Beau Geste?) for the folks at Universal to say, "Hey, let's not make a crappy remake of story that's been done-better-a couple of times!"
Crickets.
I saw Douglas Heyes' version of the P. C. Wren's novel when I was, probably 12, a half-century ago. What was passable entertainment to a sixth-grader on a Saturday afternoon on KHQ in Spokane has not passed the test of time.
Which brings me to the passage of time. As a rule, bodies decompose. I'm watching Beau Geste on Tubi a couple of days ago, and the dead Legionnaires are all propped up in the fort's gunners' slots (to scare off the Apache-er-Arabs), and some of these guys have been dead for a couple of days.
Apparently, decomposition is not allowed in the French Foreign Legion.
Clear eyes, no pecking birds, no flies, and damned if the dead dudes didn't just collapse in a stinky swamp of gassy bacteria.
It's 1906, in Algeria-I think-and the laws of bio-chemistry do not apply.
Neither does talented, coherent, well-acted story-telling.
See how smoothly I segued right into calling this TV-ish, cheapjack mess of pointless cliches what it is, "decomp?"
I love movies. I can't get enough great stories. The way a screenplay is laid down like a ship's keel, and then the hull and the crew and the launching and the christening happen. A great movie floats, ready to do great things as it moves across the screen.
Let me continue with my nautical metaphor before it sinks: Consider John McIntyre laying his ear against the new ship in "Away All Boats!" The old yard worker tells the young naval officer that "You can hear her settling into place. She's singing."
We anthropomorphize inanimate objects to make them more understandable. As social creatures, we relate to things that aren't alive when we make them life-like. A ship is a she. Your car is a he (I had an ancient Ford Fairlane 500 I called "Joe," after Joe Friday in Dragnet).
I think of great movies as being flesh and blood and humanity at its best and worst. I gag at superhero flicks because there is no humanity, just so much technology, pixelated rubber fruit.
Ugh.
A good movie has characters, protagonists and antagonists and everything in between that we can care about, that we can understand. There can be lots of special effects, but I want to know the folks the story is about. I like an interesting hero, but I demand a fascinating bad guy.
What are they doing; why are they doing it?
Beau Geste is a stillborn creation. A ship that sinks the moment it's launched. The movie had no reason to be made.
From the moment I saw the dead guys looking like guys who were alive-but told to hold very still-and from the Lucy Van Pelt psychobabble and the histrionic acting and the inexplicable attacks by hordes of grumpy Bedouins, I knew that the 12-year-old in me had grown up. What had been passable weekend entertainment was now so much tedious sausage-making-throw in the agreements, and churn out a blob of so much fatty boombaladdy in a 100-minute casing.
Beau Geste is bland and barely digestible, but it won't decompose. It's 55 years later, and the bodies of all those recognizable character actors are still lined up there, and nary a one of them is being pecked at by ravens.
Crickets.
I saw Douglas Heyes' version of the P. C. Wren's novel when I was, probably 12, a half-century ago. What was passable entertainment to a sixth-grader on a Saturday afternoon on KHQ in Spokane has not passed the test of time.
Which brings me to the passage of time. As a rule, bodies decompose. I'm watching Beau Geste on Tubi a couple of days ago, and the dead Legionnaires are all propped up in the fort's gunners' slots (to scare off the Apache-er-Arabs), and some of these guys have been dead for a couple of days.
Apparently, decomposition is not allowed in the French Foreign Legion.
Clear eyes, no pecking birds, no flies, and damned if the dead dudes didn't just collapse in a stinky swamp of gassy bacteria.
It's 1906, in Algeria-I think-and the laws of bio-chemistry do not apply.
Neither does talented, coherent, well-acted story-telling.
See how smoothly I segued right into calling this TV-ish, cheapjack mess of pointless cliches what it is, "decomp?"
I love movies. I can't get enough great stories. The way a screenplay is laid down like a ship's keel, and then the hull and the crew and the launching and the christening happen. A great movie floats, ready to do great things as it moves across the screen.
Let me continue with my nautical metaphor before it sinks: Consider John McIntyre laying his ear against the new ship in "Away All Boats!" The old yard worker tells the young naval officer that "You can hear her settling into place. She's singing."
We anthropomorphize inanimate objects to make them more understandable. As social creatures, we relate to things that aren't alive when we make them life-like. A ship is a she. Your car is a he (I had an ancient Ford Fairlane 500 I called "Joe," after Joe Friday in Dragnet).
I think of great movies as being flesh and blood and humanity at its best and worst. I gag at superhero flicks because there is no humanity, just so much technology, pixelated rubber fruit.
Ugh.
A good movie has characters, protagonists and antagonists and everything in between that we can care about, that we can understand. There can be lots of special effects, but I want to know the folks the story is about. I like an interesting hero, but I demand a fascinating bad guy.
What are they doing; why are they doing it?
Beau Geste is a stillborn creation. A ship that sinks the moment it's launched. The movie had no reason to be made.
From the moment I saw the dead guys looking like guys who were alive-but told to hold very still-and from the Lucy Van Pelt psychobabble and the histrionic acting and the inexplicable attacks by hordes of grumpy Bedouins, I knew that the 12-year-old in me had grown up. What had been passable weekend entertainment was now so much tedious sausage-making-throw in the agreements, and churn out a blob of so much fatty boombaladdy in a 100-minute casing.
Beau Geste is bland and barely digestible, but it won't decompose. It's 55 years later, and the bodies of all those recognizable character actors are still lined up there, and nary a one of them is being pecked at by ravens.