The Lost Patrol

If someone was to ask you 'What sort of films did John Ford make?' then the answer would undoubtedly be 'Westerns' yet, in 1934, he directed this strange war movie about a group of Allied soldiers in The Great War who are in the Mesopotamian desert when they come under attack from Arab snipers.

With John Ford as both director and producer, Max Steiner as the composer and with Merian C. Cooper as an executive producer, it certainly has a great deal of talent behind the camera. With a cast including Boris Karloff, there was also talent in front of the lens with Karloff three years removed from his breakout performance in Frankenstein and a year away from its sequel, Bride of Frankenstein.

The film begins in the desert where, completely out of the blue, an Arab sniper shoots and kills a British patrol's commanding officer leaving the rest of the men with no idea where to go or what to do as their C/O was the only man who knew what their mission was. The Sergeant is the next in line and he assumes command ordering the men to walk on but, when they find an oasis, he sees it as a good opportunity and location to rest up, rehydrate and assess their position.

Unfortunately, the snipers are far from finished with their unwelcome visitors and, during the first night there, one of the sentries is shot and killed outright with the other sustaining a serious wound. If that wasn't bad enough, the horses were all stolen so the men have no means to make a serious escape attempt. All they can do is try and wait it out in the hope that help will eventually arrive but, as the men are picked off one by one and the heat takes its toll, their numbers dwindle very quickly.


When they spot an RAF biplane, their hopes are temporarily raised but the pilot has no idea what is happening on the ground so lands and casually strolls towards the men before becoming yet another victim of the snipers. Fortunately, the plane has a large machine gun and, in a daring raid, the patrol takes it and blows the plane up hoping that the massive plume of smoke will attract some friendly attention.

It is no wonder that John Ford ended up predominately directing Westerns as even this early film feels more like a Western than a war picture and one could easily switch the location from Arabia to pioneer-era America and the enemy from Arab snipers to Indian archers. It is really a character-driven piece and you get to know the various members of the patrol fairly well from Victor McLaglen's Sergeant to Boris Karloff's fanatically religious Sanders.

Although this is a relatively brief film, running at under 70 minutes, Ford directed it well enough so that you get to know and feel for all the men in their extremely precarious situation. However, it is a far cry from films like Stagecoach, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance or The Searchers as this was made when Ford was honing his craft and wasn't the master director who would win four Best Director Academy Awards and, if I didn't know and you had told me it was directed by John Ford, I would have had a hard time believing you!


The Disc

Extra Features
All there is on the disc is a photo gallery but this was made before the days of multiple featurettes and director's commentaries so the only material that would have survived the shoot would be the film and some publicity/continuity stills.

The Picture
The Lost Patrol hasn't aged very well and the transfer to DVD shows all of the print damage that comes with a 76-year-old B-movie as there is plenty of grain, some scratches and plenty of evidence of print damage which is really what you should expect from a film of this kind from this era that hasn't undergone an expensive restoration process.

The cinematography by Harold Wenstrom is fairly impressive as you really feel quite isolated with a huge amount of nothingness surrounding the oasis and, when one of the men thinks he sees a sniper and decides to go after him, the warping effect that is employed to convey his troubled state of mind and sunstroke is really quite good.


The Sound
The Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono soundtrack presents the dialogue clearly and it helps that the actors all speak very clearly, enunciating well but you can clearly hear the American accents in with the British ones as it seems that dialogue coaching wasn't exactly high on the list of priorities!

Max Steiner, one of the true greats, composed a fine score only a year after his memorable composition for King Kong but, just as this film is no masterpiece, the score isn't in the same league as the music he composed for King Kong, Gone with the Wind or The Informer, which would be released next year.


Final Thoughts
The Lost Patrol is far from a great piece of cinema but is very watchable. The performances are fairly good with Boris Karloff and Victor McLaglen standing out, especially Karloff whose descent into madness is extremely well done. Watching this, I thought that it is a film that could be remade quite well (this version was itself a remake of a film of the same name which was released in 1929) if set in Afghanistan or Iraq. It is a scenario that can be applied to just about any war when you have a patrol cut off from its base and utterly stranded without any communications equipment.

Although this isn't a great film and the disc is far from brilliant, it is the sort of thing that will be of interest to John Ford fans and people who like this sort of matinée war film.