Gunga Din

Return of the Thuggee, rudely interrupting the roguish cavorting of British imperialists. "Her Majesty's very touchy about having her subjects strangled." The Musketeers of the Raj, sergeants of the fortune-hunting (Cary Grant) and elephantine (Victor McLaglen) kind, the Athos of the group (Douglas Fairbanks Jr.) is on the verge of ditching the army for a tea heiress (Joan Fontaine). Sabotaging his engagement is as crucial a mission as investigating the death cult, "how can we get a nice little war going?" The Indian village not quite deserted sets the half-heroic, half-burlesque tone, building tension as sentries are garroted on rooftops before exploding into a slapstick melee. Tagging along is the eponymous bhisti—water-carrying mascot, sacrificial ram of servility, oddball Sam Jaffe study. "Very regimental, Din." The groundwork by Hawks goes right into His Girl Friday, George Stevens takes over the spectacle in a mélange of sweep and jocularity. (A Fordian officers' ball is mined for Hal Roach gags, down to the wilting flower in the spiked punch bowl.) Grant exults in the soldier's boisterous comedy, whinnying at a golden cupola, belting out "The Roast Beef of Old England" amidst glaring Thugs, fulminating when handed a tiny fork for his escape from jail. "Think I want to break out of a blooming pudding?!" The Khyber Pass by way of Lone Pine, the pachyderm on the rope bridge, the cobra pit standing at attention. Above all, Eduardo Ciannelli's eyes burning through his brownface make-up as the ferocious guru of colonial nightmares. "Who is this ugly little savage to snarl so boldly at the British lion?" Gunga Din salutes from the hereafter while the visiting Kipling immortalizes him in a nearby tent, "not half bad" is the colonel's assessment of the poem. Nothing beats Aldrich's oblique revision in Ulzana's Raid, certainly not Spielberg's elaborate regurgitation in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. With Montagu Love, Robert Coote, Abner Biberman, Lumsden Hare, and Cecil Kellaway. In black and white.