Action in Arabia (1944)

Blandly entertaining WWII spy story about George Sanders getting involved with Nazis and intrigue in Damascus. Although filmed near the end of the war, the story takes play at the outset of WWI, with the Allies and Nazis both vying for Arab support. Petty low budget and nothing all that special except for the presence of the effortlessly suave Sanders, who manages to make this film worth checking out.

RKO produced this and a fair portion of it appears to be shot on their studio lots which makes sense considering this is 1944. George Sanders who played Simon Templar in the movies dons a formal white jacket here and stops a Nazi plot to unite Arab tribes against the allies.Lenore Albert, well known to people as a fem-me fa-tale in Abbott & Costello meets Frankenstein, is the main lady involve with the conspirators. Alan Napier also known as Alfred the butler on the 1960's series Batman has a role in this one as well.The director, interestingly enough, is a Russian National who only did a few US films as most of his other work was in Europe. While the film moves along quite quickly, there is not much to distinguish this one from many of RKO's B Pictures in the 1940's. It appears to have been cloned from WB's Casablanca but with a more minor cast. It is an interesting war film archive but not a really distinguished production unless your a George Saunders fan for who it is a must see.

**SPOILERS** Dull as dishwater WWII action film with the suave debonair as well as witty George Sanders as American reporter Michael Gordon in the just liberated, from the Vichy French, Syrian capital Damascus.Gordon comes across an underground Nazi spy ring in the city after his friend and fellow American reporter William Chalmers, Robert Anderson, was found murdered with a knife stuck in his back. With the help of the woman of mystery and intrigue in the film Yvonne Danesco, Virginia Bruce, Gordon tracks the spy ring right to the steps to the swanky hotel he's staying at run by Nazi Aagent Eric Latimer, Alan Napler. Smelling that there's something rotten in Latimer's hotel, besides the food, Gordon goes into action despite being told by the US Ambassador Matthew Reed, Robert Armstrong, to take he first plane out of Damascus the very next day before he creates an nasty international incident.***SPOILERS*** It's when Gordon gets wind from Yvonne, who's actually a Free French spy, that the Nazis are trying to incite a Muslim revolt against British and Free French rule in the Middle-East that he finally convinces Reed to get off his duff and get the US, who at the time was neutral in the war, to put the squeeze on the Nazis and their Arab supporters! Not waiting for the calvary-the US &UK-to come to his rescue Gordon single handedly puts an end to this clear and present danger to the allied war effort by getting the word out, through his exotically beautiful daughter Mounirash (Leone Aubert), to the top Arab Desert Chief Adbul El-Rashid, H.B Warner, that something is stinking up his camp and it's not the left behinds from his camels and horses. The deal or word is that old man El-Rashid is being suckered by one of his top lieutenants the sneaky and Nazi loving Eben Kareem, Jamiel Hasson, to join in with the Nazis in their war against the regions, The Middle-East, top colonialist powers the hated British and French! It's then that old man Rashid blew a fuse and ordered his men to put an end to this traitor in their mist, Eben Kareen, who soon ended up together with his Nazi friends dead in a fiery car crash!P.S Among all the amazing feats preformed by George Sanders in the movie the by far most amazing was how he kept his sparkling white and immaculately pressed dinner jacker from as much as getting a speck of dirt on it all throughout the film! Sanders or Michael Gordon also was able to fly a plane as skillfully as any top air ace in the RAF USAAF or Luftwaffe. All that with having just under a dozen flying lessons under his belt! As for the fierce and revolting Arabs warriors in the movie the only thing that they seemed to be able to do was run around in circles, on their camels, in the Syrian Desert with no idea to where they were going! That's until the wise old desert chieftain Abdul El Rashid finally gave them some directions where to go!

Action in Arabia opens with an introduction by the narrator, while displaying a boundary map of Africa, europe, and the middle east as of 1944. Starring the dashing George Sanders (from All About Eve) and Gene Lockhart, we go running around Syria looking for those Nazi's during WW II. Also look for H B Warner (who had played the great "Chang" in Lost Horizon, and JC in "King of Kings"). There has to be a lovely lady at the center of these things, and here its Virginia Bruce playing Yvonne Danesco, the wife of a crooked gambler, at the very least. People start getting knocked off, and away we go! Because we're off in a far away land, and chasing spies, its quite exotic, but according to IMDb, its mostly all filmed in LA. Scoping out the cast list, apparently Bud Wiser played "the man"...... actually, the beer WAS first; it has been around since 1883! Directed by Russian turned Frenchman Leonide Moguy, this was only one of the three English speaking films he did between 1936 and 1961. With some arabic ,german, and french language thrown in, a fun war-time adventure.