Movies as Religion: The Gospel of โSand Piratesโ
I canโt remember the first time I saw 1951โs Sand Pirates of the Sahara — itโs one of those classic movies that has simply always been with me. It was a perennial on my local PBS channel for filling overnight time slots in the late 70s, so that by the time the miracle of the VCR came around and I taped it one night, I already had the movie memorized. Not that that didnโt keep me from devouring it at least another 50 times as a teenager.
Sand Pirates looms in my mind the way that March of the Wooden Soldiers and the โ33 King Kong and The Wizard of Oz do: as one of those movies of my childhood that expanded my awareness of the real world — of human motivations and desires and fears — through the most fantastical kind of fantasy. I couldnโt get enough of it: the escapism and the adventure, sure, but also the lurking danger not just in Ramรณn Jamรณnโs evil (but handsome) Prince Khalid but also in Brett Armstrongโs swashbuckling Roland Blackstone. Roland may have been the first hint my teenaged self got of the dark side of sexuality, though I was only dimly aware of it as a girl.
But watching the film again as an adult… wow! There is something treacherous and torturous in the push and pull between Roland and Khalid as they battle for the heart and hand of Sandra Sinclairโs Emily Meredith (even if she is a bit a twit), a barely submerged undercurrent of presumed masculine supremacy: theyโre more alike than they are different, and this may be the first movie I recall in which the hero and the villain are separated by mere degrees. Roland may truly love Emily while Khalid sees her only as a prize to be won, but they both are driven by virile aggression — they both want to possess her in a totally sexual way. Thereโs a lot of actual, if veiled, rage in the โraging passion and clashing swords in the pitiless desert wastesโ that classic poster for the film promised. (I soooo could have written film critic Pieter der Vanderhaarโs recent bestseller The Cad in the Gray Flannel Suit: Male Dominance in Postwar Pop Culture, from Arpรกdโs โSand Pirates of the Saharaโ to Hitchcockโs โTarnished,โ 1950โ1959.)
But much more than just getting my adolescent hormones flowing, Sand Pirates was instrumental in igniting my love of movies. Thereโs something quintessentially movie-ish about the film, something that seems to wrap up in one perfect package all that is right and good and perfect about movies. When people talk about loving โThe Movies,โ itโs movies like this that theyโre talking about. It deploys the grand drama between good and evil while also acknowledging the fine line — of exigency, of opportunity — between the two. That glorious scene in which Roland, Emily, and Emilyโs father, kindly old Professor Meredith (Michael Sloane), stumble across the book (the one that hints at the secret of the pharaohโs jewel) in Sir Wallaceโs (Nigel Clive) library in Oxford, helped by Khalid, before he had revealed his true identity, when they all still believe he is merely Sir Wallaceโs factotum… thatโs such a great scene, because Khalid is as genuinely excited by the find as the rest of them are.
Because we really do love Khalid early on, with his rapier wit (more than a match for Rolandโs) and his aching desire to see his familyโs honor restored, itโs hard to see him as the big bad villain later on, even if thatโs the role he gets slotted into in the third act. Itโs hard to know now whether screenwriter Peter Appleton was intentionally aiming for the subversive with Khalid (and with that twist at the end — ho boy!), because so much of the film is clearly very conventional (โYou! I thought you were dead!,โ Khalid squawks at Roland in the final swordfight. โYou thought wrong!โ Roland snaps back. *groan*). Was Appleton sly enough to sneak in the suggestion that those we perceive as the enemy often have more in common with us than weโd like to acknowledge? Or was he merely attempting to surprise jaded moviegoers who were all too familiar with Hollywood clichรฉs? Weโll never know, with Appletonโs disappearance from the movie biz after he was hauled up before McCarthyโs dreaded HUAC interrogators on national television… but you have to wonder whether that furtive rebelliousness was what caught the eye of the commie hunters in the first place.

I often kid that movies are my religion, but itโs really not a joke. You get baptized into the worship of movies by the likes of Sand Pirates (and Oz and Kong and so on), and the love and the devotion never leaves you. And Iโm obviously not the only one who feels that way. Famously, of course, thereโs Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, who have cited the film as a primary influence on Raiders of the Lost Ark — both films were venerations of the chapter serials of the 1930s, but Spielberg and Lucas would have actually seen Sand Pirates as kids — and Spielberg pays homage to the film in the opening sequence of Raiders: The South American idol Indy snatches from the pedestal is the Egyptian funerary object Khalid uses to conk Professor Meredith on the noggin in the temple scene. (Hollywood lore says Spielberg found the prop in storage, Paramount having snatched up the HHS Studios warehouse for a song years earlier when HHS was bankrupted by its 1963 Biblical-epic flop The Book of Genesis.)
The list of films that directly refer to Sand Pirates is ridiculous. Thereโs that bit with the jammed machine gun in Martin Scorseseโs 1975 Howard Beach Hooligans that plays off the gangster shootout that sends Roland and Emily fleeing New York for London in the beginning of the film. Lasse Hallstrรถmโs 1997 old-coot drama Portrait of Lars and Eddie is practically an expansion of the relationship between Professor Meredith and Sir Wallace, down to their reversion to schoolboy-buddy antics when together and even their secret code (โMoreโs the pity!โ and โAvast ye scoundrels!โ). Even the dumb 2002 angel-on-earth chick flick Pennyโs From Heaven works in a rather sophisticated nod to Sand Pirates, when Matthew McConaugheyโs Eric stumbles upon Reese Witherspoonโs Penny in a compromising position with Ericโs best friend… itโs played for laughs, but that scene directly apes, from the camera angles to the use of the mirror, the moment when Roland overhears the encounter between Emily and Khalid at the museum and misinterprets what he hears, changing his pursuit of Emily from one fueled by affection to one fueled by jealousy.
But itโs not just filmmakers — a lot of movie fans, too, obviously have a special place in their hearts for Sand Pirates of the Sahara. It regularly appears at the top of DVD wish lists — the film has never been released on VHS or DVD, and itโs starting to look like it never will be. (Apparently thereโs a rights issue with the popular Jerome Schwartz/Miles Tago tune โShifting Sands of My Heart,โ which underscores the fancy-dress-party scene; though the music was performed both on the score and onscreen by the famous Bill Glendale Orchestra, actress Billie Grey is onscreen actually lip-synching to vocals sung by 50s chanteuse Lucinda Laine, and Laineโs estate is for some reason dragging its heels on giving permission for a home video version.)
So I jealously protect my now-23-year-old homemade tape of the film — Iโm half afraid to watch it, for fear of wearing it out, but usually I canโt resist. Brett Armstrong was my first celebrity crush, the first truly unattainable object of desire I encountered: far more than the usual โwell, heโs a movie star and Iโm no one,โ he, you know, died before I was born. He has only ever existed for me — and since his tragic death in 1962 for all of us — on film, and watching Sand Pirates, which I do every couple of months, is as much about peeking into my own childhood and my own sexual awakening as it is about looking into a celluloid realm where reality and fantasy sit in uneasy company.

That brings up an aspect of our relationship to The Movies that Sand Pirates of the Sahara always makes me think about: the immortality that film grants to those it elevates to fame that is at once spectacular and poignant. And this is about the movie loverโs evolving relationship with a particular film, too, how the way we see a film is ever changing. As a kid, all I knew was that I loved this movie. But when I watch it today, that love gets commingled with the knowledge of how it shaped my love of pop culture in later years. Like this: I have no doubt that one of the reasons I adore Bruce Campbell is that he bears a striking physical resemblance to Brett Armstrong. (Am I totally stoked for the upcoming 2008 Martin Scorsese biopic of Armstrong starring Campbell? Oh my god yes I am.)
I knew nothing about Armstrong as a kid, just that he wielded a mean sword and made me feel kinda funny, but in a good way. I didnโt know that he had packed movie houses in the 30s and 40s, that millions of women swooned at that rakish grin. I didnโt know that heโd been up for the role of Rhett Butler and been crushed when it went to whatsisname. I didnโt know that Armstrong saw Roland as a last chance to regain his earlier fame, or that he, ironically, came to despise the character when he began to believe that the overwhelming popularity of the movie — and not his public drinking and carousing in the increasingly straitlaced 50s — killed his chances at other roles. I didnโt know that — according to his widow, former starlet Acey Winstead (who died only in 2002), who has been quoted in numerous places saying as much — Armstrong had taken to disparaging the character as โRoland the Intrepid Explorer.โ
Now I know these things, though, it makes me very sad to think that a movie that has given so many millions of movie lovers so much pleasure actually brought such pain to its star. It doesnโt make me love the movie less, but it does make me appreciate it more, to know that there is a price paid by those who wrought even the art we consider less than Art.
โSand Pirates of the Saharaโ
1951, HHS Studios
director: Ferenc Arpรกd
writer: Peter Appleton
Man. If I hadn’t seen the Majestic, I would now be totally confused.
I’m sorry you saw *The Majestic*… :-(
Saw it–heck I bought the DVD. (In my defense, at the time of the purchase I hadn’t seen it yet.)
I actually thought there was nothing inherently flawed in that movie; it could’ve worked. The only mistep (and it was a doozy–sinking the entire enterprise) was casting Jim Carrey. Now, I like Jim Carrey. When he’s on Oprah or Charlie Rose he comes across as a genuinely affable and thoughtful person. And I think he’s genuinely talented as a comedian (great in Lemony Snicket). But lord, when he tries to actually act–you know, actually play a character or carry a straight dialogue exchange–he has got to be the most awkward, stilted, unnatural, affected, tone-deaf actor I’ve *ever* seen. And that includes child actors from old 60’s TV shows.
*end of speech*
Actually, I think Jim Carrey is the best thing about *The Majestic*… well, other than *Sand Pirates of the Sahara,* of course. Carrey’s got a lot of talent that is not connected with making his ass cheeks talk, but this flick is so crammed full of sentimental claptrap that you wanna smack it for its shamelessness. It’s really too bad that Carrey is so desperate for serious cred that he went for this role. He should do a couple of indies where he gets paid scale and eats from the craft table and doesn’t have to do anything schmaltzy — then maybe we can take him seriously.
My review of *The Majestic* is here, but be warned — the formatting on the page is kinda screwed up, and I don’t have time to fix it now. Doh….
I actually remember that review. I like how you acknowledged that they made Carrey look like an absolute freak in the original poster. I guess it was supposed to be in an old-fashioned style, but it just ended up looking ugly.
They changed the DVD cover to something much more pleasant. (Carrey and the girl in front of the theater.) I usually hate it when they release DVD’s with fronts different from the original promo posters (because so often they go with some horribly photoshopped cut and paste thing that looks like a cover of the National Enquirer). But the Majestic change was a good one.
Oh girl, you completely sucked me in! I got all upset that I’d never get to see “Sand Pirates,” even googled “Lucinda Laine” to see if I could write to her estate lawyers (and found her – or someone with that name who died in 1985, anyway).
Good one. I’ll never trust you again …
I use a printout of this wonderfully perceptive review of a virtually lost film to keep my place in my (?the only?) copy of the ๐๐ธ๐ธ๐ด ๐ธ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ช๐ท๐ญ, with has the Jorge Luis Borges bookplate I have been lucky enough to see once, but know I shall never be able to locate again. How odd to find the storied volume on the discards pile at the Friends of National Library of the Argentine Republic annual book sale…