Watch Drums of the Desert For Free

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.

Ralph Byrd (the best Dick Tracy) puts on a mustache and plays a French legionnaire who is training a group of Senegalese soldiers how to parachute so that they become a mobile strike force. He also falls in love with his best friend's fiancée accidentally and there is an Arab uprising in the offing too. So a busy film that moves effortlessly along to the final skirmish. It was what Monogram Pictures did, low budget maybe, but entertaining and unpretentious whether it was crime or adventure or drama. The acting from the cast is adequate and happily Mantan Moreland has a bit more chance to act rather than mug, being comic but also serious and sensitive. He does the action more than Ralph Byrd too and even gets to shoot down the main villain. Too often in his film career he played demeaning roles which was shameful as he could act really well when given the chance. Which was not that much.A good programmer then that doesn't outstay its welcome.

I love Mantan Moreland but I don't like this picture. I have watched a lot of black and white pictures that go back to the 1940s. Mantan Moreland is a great black actor. Funny with big eyes and a high pitched laugh. I am a white female & like mysteries like Charlie Chan. and Mantan is in a lot of them as "Birmingham Brown" I feel this movie degrades the black people especially the men. The reason I don't like this movie is the difference between the parts the black and white actors played. Sgt Williams/Moreland is in charge of a group of all black parachuters. Most of the white military men are in high positions. The parachuters talk on the airplane. The script makes them dumb. Some don't know how to count to ten when they have to jump out of the plane and pull their parachute cord. Sgt Williams tells them what they must do. It seems they were not trained previously.I don't know how it turns out, I stopped watching it. I felt they made the parts of the men that were black, stupid and used their performance as something that was funny to laugh at. I think I saw this awhile back and the parachuters are a part of winning the war.I also watched a movie where Moreland was friends with Frankie Darro a short white actor in "The Gang's All Here" 1941. They were just friends in the movie and Darro was not his boss. Moreland played Jeff & calls Frankie "Mr Frankie" throughout the movie and Frankie played by Frankie Darro call "Jeff" just Jeff.As Christian for a long time watching these older movies gives me a lot of insight on the way people are and were treated. Things I did not notice before I see now and it makes me sad. I am glad God woke me up.

"Drums of the Desert" is an incredibly outdated and bad movie from Monogram Pictures--an ultra-low budget film studio that prided itself in cranking out cheap B-movies very quickly. In the case of this film, however, it's much poorer than average for the tiny studio. How poor? Well, the film is supposed to be about the French Legion in North Africa--yet not a single one of the French people in the film speak with ANY accent other than a 100% American one. No, this isn't because they're supposed to be foreign legionnaires--the film clearly says that many of them are French. But they look and sound about as French as Hattie McDaniel or Keye Luke!! Heck, even Dick Van Dyke's notoriously awful accent in "Mary Poppins" has him TRYING to sound English! Here, Ralph Byrd and the rest don't even bother.The film begins with a French(?) officer (Byrd) meeting a young lady on the ship to North Africa. They soon fall in love. However, when the ship arrives at port, he discovers that she is the fiancé of his best friend--a fellow legion officer!!! Talk about a clichéd situation!! And, you know since this is a crappy film, by the end the fiancé will be worm food and the pair will be able to marry!! All that was left was to figure out what would be in the middle. It wasn't all terrible--but it also is 100% predictable...and a bit racist in how they handle all the Black soldiers from Harlem (or is it Senegal?!). All I know is that on top of being very outdated in how it handled race issues, I also wonder why so many Hollywood films seemed to STRONGLY promote British and French imperialism. It seems that American films should have supported freedom and self-determination...or would that only be for folks that look and sound like us? Unfortunately, at the time this was the case.So is there anything to like about the movie? Not much. While a bit racist in showing them as all very ignorant, the Black soldiers were competent and honorable fighting men. And, some of their dialog was funny. Otherwise, no...there really isn't anything to like about this poorly written and equally poorly acted film.

I'm going to make a stab at simply explaining the story of this film. Because there are a good many characters and a great many plot threads its going to sound much blander than it is since I'm compressing so much into so few lines (trust me its much better than this): Ralph Byrd plays a member of the French army stationed in Morocco. Taking a ship from France to Africa he meets and woos a young lady who suddenly disappears when the ship docks. Picking a contingent of Senegalese troops he heads off to his fort where he's to teach them to be paratroopers. Upon arriving at the fort he again meets the woman who has stolen his heart and who is the fiancé of one of the officers stationed there. While out on training maneuvers Byrd and his men are attacked by Arabs who want them out of the country. They manage to capture one of the attackers who is the brother of a sheik that Byrd had met on the ship from France. The brother denies his involvement to the sheik, who then plots revenge when the brother is executed.This is a very breezy very complicated little movie moves like the wind. Byrd and the rest of the cast are excellent in this tale of conflicting loyalties, romance and action. I must single out Mantan Moreland as the New York native now in charge of the paratroopers. Moreland, best known as Charlie Chan's butler Birmingham Brown gets to be an action star showing little of his trademark fear and anxiety as he charges in with his men on more than one occasion (his method of getting information will be positively frightening to Chan fans). Moreland also is allowed to be more than just comic relief in a role that is more than just jokes and reaction (The scene where he asks Byrd if they can bury one of his men with a parachute is especially touching). This film is more proof that Moreland was an under used actor.I really liked this movie a great deal. Clearly a low budget programmer, this film somehow rises above its humble origins to become an excellent little adventure film. Regrettably its not better known. This is one to keep an eye out for.