Rogues’ Regiment ** (1948, Dick Powell, Marta Toren, Vincent Price, Stephen McNally) – Classic Movie Review 11,419

Director Robert Florey’s 1948 Universal Pictures film noir action thriller Rogues’ Regiment stars Dick Powell, Marta Toren, Vincent Price and Stephen McNally, and was the first American film set in the First Indo-China War.

Powell stars as American Intelligence Agent Whit Corbett, a Nazi hunter who becomes a French Foreign Legionnaire in order to try to find a former SS fascist war criminal believed to be hiding in the Legion in French Indo-China.

Rogues’ Regiment tells an exotic adventure story full of diverting elements, but never meshes them together coherently, despite Florey’s worthy attempt as director and the intriguing original story by producer Robert Buckner, inspired by stories of former Nazis enlisting in the French Foreign Legion and the disappearance of Martin Bormann.

Powell is very passable, Märta Torén is an asset as Lili Maubert, and Price, hamming it up for far more than it’s worth as Mark van Patten, a back-stabbing arms-dealer, is most entertaining.

Despite the many plus points, it is nothing very special to write home about.

Swedish star Märta Torén appeared in 11 American films, including Casbah (1948), Rogues’ Regiment (1948), Illegal Entry (1949), Sword in the Desert (1949), One Way Street (1950), Spy Hunt [Panther’s Moon] (1950), Deported (1950), Mystery Submarine (1950), Sirocco (1951), Assignment – Paris (1952), and The Man Who Watched Trains Go By (1952), but died from a cerebral haemorrhage, aged only 31, on 19 February 1957.

Also in the cast are Edgar Barrier, Henry Rowland, Carol Thurston, James Millican, Richard Loo, Philip Ahn, Richard Fraser, Otto Reichow, Dennis Dengate, Frank Conroy, Martin Garrralaga, James Nolan, Paul Bryar, Eugene Borden, John Doucette, Maurice Marsac, Albert Pollet, Lester Sharpe and Victor Sen Young. Paul Coze, who plays the French Commander, also acted as film’s technical adviser.

© Derek Winnert 2021 Classic Movie Review 11,419

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