The Lost Patrol (1934 film)

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The Lost Patrol is a 1934 war film made by RKO. It was directed and produced by John Ford, with Merian C. Cooper as executive producer and Cliff Reid as associate producer. The screenplay was by Dudley Nichols, adapted by Garrett Fort from the novel Patrol by Philip MacDonald. The music score was by Max Steiner and the cinematography by Harold Wenstrom. The film is a remake of an earlier (1929) British film, directed and written by Walter Summers and based on the same novel.

The film starred Victor McLaglen, Boris Karloff, Wallace Ford, Reginald Denny, J.M. Kerrigan, and Alan Hale. Max Steiner received a nomination for the Academy Award for Original Music Score.

1 Plot
2 See also
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Set during WW I, the film follows a British Army cavalry regiment on patrol as they cross the Mesopotomian desert. The Sergeant (Victor McLaglen) is in charge, the commanding officer, the only one who knows their destination, having been killed by an Arab sniper. The sergeant keeps them heading north hoping to rejoin their brigade. They stop for the night at an oasis and awake the next morning to find their horses stolen, their sentry dead, the oasis surrounded and survival difficult. One by one, the men are picked off as they desperately fend off the enemy, waiting for reinforcements to arrive. The most spectacular death scene goes to Boris Karloff, playing a religious zealot who goes insane and begins marching towards the Arabs while bearing a makeshift cross.

[edit] See also

Mesopotamian Campaign

[edit] Trivia

Max Steiner's musical theme for The Lost Patrol would later be adapted into his score for Warner Bros' Casablanca.
Several other films using the same or similar plot devices include the 1939 western, Bad Lands, Bataan (1943), The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) and its remake, Flight of the Phoenix (2004), the Israeli film, Sayarim (The Patrol) (1967) and Delta Force One: The Lost Patrol (1999).