Beat the Devil, despite it’s 1953 release, may be the most relevant Huston film for our current Age of Self-Parody Performances. You know: once-serious actors who now seem to coast by on playing offsetting exaggerations of former roles–Christopher Walken, Gary Busey, and, of course, William Shatner, spring to mind.

I’m sure there’s plenty more, but these three are the front-runners (Nick Cage doesn’t quite make the cut because I don’t think he’s ever doing a parody of himself–it’s just him). Walken led the way somewhat accidentally, revealing a comic side on Saturday Night Live and showing the world that this creepy, Oscar-winning skeleton man can dance in Spike Jonze’s music video of Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” (ahh 2001…).

Reading The Three Little Pigs; The Country Bears, “Poker Face.” Busey kind-of, sort-of predates even that with his cameo in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (“Gimme a kiss”), but with his recent Vitamin Water ads it’s become pretty full blown. Aaaaaaand then there’s Shatner.

But whatever the reason for our love of character actors mocking their early, legitimate stuff, it’s nothing new, because Beat the Devil is essentially the same thing, and one of the oddest entries into Huston’s filmography (a phrase I feel I’ve been typing a lot).

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The African Queen is kind of an odd duck in the Huston pantheon. And I’m not just saying that because I love the phrase “…is an odd duck.” Seriously! The next time you’re with your friends and see a flabby middle-aged man, balding, with glasses and a briefcase looking like he’s regretted every decision he’s ever made in his life, point at him and say, “That’s an odd duck.” Guaranteed laugh every time.

Anyway, African Queen. It’s Huston’s first “comedy,” or at least there’s a great deal more humor in it than you’d expect from Huston coming off The Red Badge of Courage and Key Largo. And much of the laughs come from the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

Actually maybe it’s more notable for being Huston’s first stab at a romantic drama. I don’t know, it’s weird. On the one hand, you have Katharine Hepburn who was known for screwball comedies, then you have Bogie who was known for being the stoic hero. The two don’t naturally seem to go together in the first place, but then Huston reverses their roles and makes Hepburn the wise-cracking tough guy and Bogie the straight man.

The Plot: Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother are British missionaries in German East Africa on the eve of World War I. All but isolated, their only contact with the civilized world is crude slob of a deliveryman Charlie Allnut (Bogart), who brings them supplies and mail with the use of his dilapidated boat, The African Queen.

The war breaks out, and, after some manhandling from the Germans, Rose’s brother dies. With nothing left, Rose joins with Charlie and the two voyage downriver, careful to evade German fortresses and gunboats, crocs and leeches, and the other’s personality.

What’s Good About It: I’m not a fan of Katharine Hepburn (who, if you ever see Dick Cavett’s interview with her, was every inch of bitch in real life as she played on screen), but she and Bogie do have chemistry. Hepburn was born to play the uptight, domineering Rose, and Bogie’s happy-go-lucky hard-drinking Charlie was probably the closest he ever came to playing himself. It also earned him his only Oscar.

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After tackling two contemporary classics (The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre), a few other popular works (In This Our Life, We Were Strangers, Key Largo), and three war documentaries (Report from the Aleutians, Battle of San Pietro, Let There Be Light), in 1951, Huston delved into America’s literary past and adapted Stephen Crane’s 1895 Civil War novel The Red Badge of Courage.

Clocking in at a miniscule 69 minutes and starring war hero Audie Murphy, veteran and two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist Bill Mauldin, Andy Devine, Royal Dano, among others, Badge is among the more forgotten than remembered of Huston’s filmography. It’s more or less faithful to the novel, following the young Henry Fleming from his first experience in combat to his flight, his wounding from the rifle butt of a fellow soldier, on up through his final heroics as flag bearer, and seems appropriate for its time, coming relatively soon after the end of World War II.

Almost everyone, Huston included, speaks of Badge as though it was in line to become his next masterpiece had it not been for the meddling studio and their insistence on cuts. Whether that’s true or not, and whether the excised footage had been restored, honestly, I don’t get much of a sense of greatness from Badge.

For one, this is one Huston film where the narration seems wholly unnecessary. Maybe that was a studio decision, but I have yet to read anything that says it was. Huston’s a talented enough director to show everything the narrator mentions, so when he does, it’s overkill. Fleming has just shown the audience he’s brave by carrying the American flag head first into combat, do we really need this ponderously officious voice to confirm it?  And I’m not one of those viewers who dislikes narration in any form, because I usually don’t mind it—just that here it’s repetitive.

The shortness is a detriment as well. Fleming sort of drifts through the narrative hazily wanting to achieve true courage on the battlefield and going from coward to braggart to hero all in the span of around 20 minutes. This is the main focus of the story—to show Henry’s transformation from recruit to warrior, boy to man—but it just sort of happens. The narrator may make some comment about how it was at this or that moment that Henry understood the nature of war or manhood or whatever, but it feels haphazard.

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Huston doesn’t give much time to Key Largo in his autobiography, save for sharing his dissatisfaction with Warner Brothers in the late 1940s and some epic stories of his gambling debts. Offhandedly he mentions that it was nominated for Best Picture and Claire Trevor won the award for Best Supporting Actress.

What small part that does focus on the film mentions Edward G. Robinson’s reluctance to take up another gangster role, having played so many of them in the past. However, there is a spot-on description of Robinson’s first scene in the movie, where he’s soaking in a bathtub and smoking a long cigar: “He looked like a crustacean with its shell off.” To put it succinctly, it’s perfect.

But despite Huston’s reticence to talk about it (or write, as it were), Key Largo is still very fun. Not as deep as The Maltese Falcon, but not quite as bang-out, mindless entertainment as Across the Pacific.

Based on the play of the same name (I would use “eponymous,” but I don’t want to sound like a snob) by Maxwell Anderson, Largo stars Bogie as WWII veteran Frank McCloud, who’s made the trip down to the eponymous Key Largo to seek out the father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) of a former war buddy.

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