It's been well over a year since I had mentioned I'd be renting this one on DVD, after being impressed with Lesley Selander's neglected low-budget horror effort THE VAMPIRE'S GHOST (1945). At the time, I had even joked about the fact that the director's filmography included six(!) pictures with the word "fort" in their title this, of course, being one of them.
Despite the lowly rating, I enjoyed the film for what it was a thoroughly unassuming romantic adventure. Its B-movie roots are evident in the ample stock footage (particularly during the final desert charge on an oil well which also presents an incongruity in wardrobe, with heroes and villains dressed in outfits from different time periods!) but also the choice of leading man, Carlos Thompson: the Argentinian actor made only a handful of English-language films (none very notable, though his last film was the delightful French WWII comedy LA VIE DE Château [1966] with Catherine Deneuve) and committed suicide back home in 1990.
Anyway, FORT ALGIERS was really a vehicle for Yvonne De Carlo, who specialized in such forgettable exotic fare around this time; here, she's a French agent who had forsaken lover Thompson for 'the cause' but meets up with him again when she's sent to spy on evil Arab potentate Raymond Burr (highly amusing in a turban). Leif Erickson delivers an unbelievably hammy performance as Thompson's arrogant sergeant though his character is eventually softened when selected for the hero's buddy in a mission (in which Thompson has to rescue De Carlo from Burr when the girl's cover is blown); the rest of the cast includes such familiar faces as John Dehner, Anthony Caruso and Robert Warwick.
