ABBOTT AND COSTELLO IN THE FOREIGN LEGION is the first film Bud and Lou made after Lou’s second bout with rheumatic fever. Released eleven months after the last film as a result, almost an eternity compared to the pace they used to release films. The time off between films is made all the more crucial because while Bud and Lou would remain profitable, Martin and Lewis started making films at this time and became the new box office comedy team kings, definitely out grossing Bud and Lou. On a personally amusing level, they also released this movie the exact same day my Mother was born. Yes, both her and this film will be 70 on July 24. I would rank this in the upper half of Abbott and Costello films alone due to the fact Tor Johnson gives multiple big splashes to Bud Abbott, but beyond that bit of splendid surrealism, we have a mostly non intrusive plot that gives way to a lot of funny moments and when watching Bud and Lou, that’s all I really care about.
As far as the plot goes, it at least starts out pretty well. Bud and Lou are scripting a wrestling match between two wrestlers which comedy wise, is a great excuse for Lou to get tied up in the ropes and be tossed around in a few wrestling moves, including a giant swing. In a plot that will make any modern day Internet wrestling nerd fan happy, one of the wrestlers, Abdullah, refuses to lose/do the job because he’s a true champion, so he goes back to his home country of Algiers. Bud and Lou are required to follow him per orders by the promoter to get back the $5000 Abdullah was paid. Plot is fine so far, but from this point it becomes a muddled mess between some Arabs wanting to blockade train tracks, the French Foreign legion fights the Arabs, one of the legionaries is a spy working for the Arabs and there’s a pretty girl who is a spy working for the legionaries. Amongst all this, Bud and Lou join the foreign legion. It’s all just a good excuse for some really nice comedy routines.
The comedy routines, let me count the ways. Verbally, they get good mileage out of “oui/we” confusion in a French speaking country like only Bud and Lou can. Very funny bit where Bud reprimands Lou for being a wolf in a country where the women are well behaved. Lou questions if they have sex - without actually saying it - only for a woman with a bunch of kids to walk by. The Lou stuff in training with the rifle and bayonet, falling down all over the place in addition to wrecking havoc with a machine gun, had me laughing like crazy. Bud and Lou get some classic scenes together when they run around that building in a dark night hitting each other on the head, thinking it’s a bad guy they’re hitting. Lou’s cries towards the end and insisting he hit Bud over the head with his own club versus Bud’s club that Bud offers Lou to hit him with is a riot. Bud and Lou being stranded in the desert and witnessing all the mirages is another gem. Lou talking to the skeleton, Lou finding the ice cream stand mirage with the two pretty girls and then Bud finding real water leading to a great gag of a fish swallowing another man’s dentures and spitting repeatedly in Lou’s face. Great stuff here and Bud and Lou’s interactions are priceless. I think the movie gets a bit ridiculous towards the end once the entire room slaps each other during the wrestling match and the obligatory chase then happens, but there is enough great comedy before to make this one of Bud and Lou’s better films. Just pure entertainment, nothing too deep, but very entertaining. Gotta love Bud and Lou.
People of note include the already mentioned Tor Johnson years before hooking up with Ed Wood and becoming a best selling Halloween mask. Bowery Boy David Gorcey gets a brief bit as a newspaper boy in the desert scene and as for the pretty spy girl mentioned earlier? Us Three Stooges fans have been avoiding her for years. Her name is Patricia Medina and she would go on to play the evil queen in SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES.
