MARCH OR DIE  sees Gene Hackman and his small force of French Foreign Legionnaires sweating under the broiling Moroccan sun, helping archaeologist Max von Sydow unearth ‘The Angel Of The Desert’, a relic that will enable “fat, overstuffed Frenchmen to belch their lunch at the sight of gold in the Louvre.” 

As they toil, they are probably thinking ‘what a shame’—to spend $9,000,000 on a picture that will pass in the shuffle, thanks to their flat performing of a stillborn and clichéd script, under the lame direction of Dick Richards.  Then, over the horizon, a long line of horse & camel-mounted tribesmen appear. They charge, the Legion digs in, things crackle. More and more Tuaregs show up, until a tidal wave of screaming locals are surging down the sand dunes into a doozy of a fight, a noisy, furious and exciting brawl, one of the better big-time movie battles in a decade. This wingding is a complete surprise considering how staid everything else had been until that point. Action fans will lap it up.

I knew the Navy would be a better idea

The waste of Hackman and von Sydow, the chintzy use of beautiful Catherine Deneuve, and the laughable presence of Terence Hill (aka Mario Girotti) in the role of hero are all temporarily forgiven with the final 15 minutes of epic mayhem.  Director Richards had been building a rep doing genre pictures. There was the neat little western The Culpepper Cattle Company, the decently-reviewed comedy Rafferty And The Gold-Dust Twins and the well-liked retro private eye noir Farewell My Lovely, with a revived Robert Mitchum. Then he massively dropped an expensive ball with this 1977 tanker, snuffed by critics, expiring at the box-office, $3,243,000 coming in 126th for the year.

Gene? Wake up! Gene?

Don’t hate me because I’m bored to death

With the exception of Ian Holm as the leader of the Tauregs, the supporting players are bad, and Hackman is uncharacteristically numb. The script stinks.  At least the color and sound are good and that battle is a whopper. Watching the film is like listening to someone sell insurance, but if you occasionally get totally fed up with Stupid Mankind In General and are feeling “Get it over with”, then the wipeout on view here offers painless armchair catharsis.

I saw this in a theater filled with Marines on liberty from Camp Pendleton. They’d been fidgeting through the boredom, 104 minutes so dull it seems longer. When the fighting erupted, so did they: you’d think they were going to tear the seats out of their rows.

Written by David Zelag Goodman. Shot in Spain, John Alcott manning the camera, Maurice Jarre the score. With Jack O’ Halloran, Rufus, Walter Gotell, Marne Maitland and Marcel Bozzuffi.