Sergeants 3

While flipping through the channel guide on ReplayTV, I stumbled upon the following description:

Sergeants 3 (1962, ***) Three cavalry officers and a bugler work together to thwart an American Indian Chief. Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr.

My first thought was this was a great example of unintentional comedy. But I've come to realize it's a little more complicated.

I'm familiar with the concept of unintentional comedy and the related unintentional comedy scale (Warning: extensive knowledge of sports and pop culture from the 80's and 90's is helpful, if not crucial, to digesting the UCR) from the writings of Bill Simmons, a columnist for ESPN. In his words:

"Unintentional Comedy," those moments when something or someone cracks you up ... even though that wasn't necessarily the original intention.

Prime examples include:

William Shatner's interpretation of Elton John's Rocket Man.

Brook Benton's video for Mother Nature, Father Time. In the words of Mary Tiegreen, "Ah, 1965, when music videos were elegant, simple, and classy."

And, of course, there's the version of Apache by Tommy Seebach which I've seen described as what happens when you have $10,000 to shoot a video and spend $9,000 on cocaine.

It doesn't have to be music related. There's also political examples although it should be said that Setting the Record Straight also qualifies for the unintentional tragedy scale.

But back to Sergeants 3. I think the aforementioned write-up is funny although there's no obvious reason it should be. It was easy, for example, to figure out which part Sammy Davis Jr. would be playing. So it seemed to be a candidate for unintentional comedy. I was loathe to undermine my unseen interpretation of the film, but I did click over and watch part of a scene.

Then yesterday that I did a little research and discovered that Sergeants 3 is a remake of the 1939 film Gunga Din!

Are there other Rat Pack films inspired, if tenuously, on Kipling poems?! I see there's a musical adaptation of the Robin Hood story transplanted to prohibition era Chicago. Somehow - I can't articulate how - this makes more "sense" to me than Sergeants 3.

So here's the tough part. I know the era featured plenty of campy films and I even see that one classification of Sergeants 3 is as a Comedic Western. That would seem to prevent unintentional comedy qualification although, at the same time, raises questions of judgement as far as making a comedy about a desperate confrontation with a rampaging Indian tribe. Certainly the original poem is an unlikely inspiration for humor. I guess I'd need to see both films to make a more informed judgement.

Should I watch some Rat Pack films for historical purposes?