MonsterHunter

Legend has it that some evil genie was pissed because of the way this Universal movie portrayed the whole milieu of ancient Arabia (not enough emphasis on evil genies probably) and as a result he smote all those involved with the film. Star Jon Hall committed suicide after a battle with cancer, Maria Montez drowned in her own bathtub, and Sabu croaked before he was forty. I’m not really a big believer in this story (mainly because I made it up), but I always like to dampen your enjoyment of escapist fare such as this by dropping on you the fact that in spite of everyone’s broad smiles, derring-do, and happy endings, all these people were destined to terrible fates (well except Ms. Montez - after all, she could have lived to act some more).

I’m not sure if I would recommend this movie just to get a look at everyone before they suffered their unfortunate fates or merely because I actually kind of liked it, but this is an early forties adventure film worth looking for. Sure Maria Montez is frequently cited as being the worst actress that ever lived and Jon Hall seems impossibly white for his role as the Caliph of Baghdad, while Leif Erickson is even a whiter guy than him in the role of the evil brother if that’s possible. Did I mention that this movie even features Shemp Howard as Sinbad? Only in America, baby!

Released when we were getting our asses beat all over the Pacific and Europe by Tojo and the Nazis, this film of exotic locales (well, there were sand and palm trees - that’s exotic for anyone outside of southern California, right?), a battle for a throne, good hearted circus folk, and of course belly dancing, this was a big hit for Universal and launched one of the more improbable of film genres: the exotic picture starring Jon Hall and Maria Montez (did it occur to anyone that this movie succeeded in spite of these two?) which saw them re-team for later efforts like White Savage, Gypsy Wildcat, Cobra Woman, Sudan, and of course Ali Baba And The Forty Thieves. I would also be remiss if I failed to mention that Jon Hall was in the greatest of allThe Invisible Man sequels, Invisible Agent (sadly Maria was not in this one, but she did appear in The Invisible Woman ).

Maria Montez plays Scheherazade who is apparently Baghdad’s equivalent to Alyssa Alps or something because everyone wants to see her strut her stuff at the little circus that Ahmad runs for the denizens of that fair city. Ahmad is played by the very burly Billy Gilbert (and by burly, I mean fat). Billy was famous for a sneezing routine he did that was pretty much comedy gold in the twenties, thirties, and forties. They even worked it into this movie! While I was watching it, I didn’t know what he and Shemp were up to, but I just chalked it up to their days in Vaudeville. Later, I was reading about him and it turns out that that was his signature spot. He was even the inspiration and the voice for Sneezy in Snow White back in 1937.

Back to that dancing gal. She catches the eye of an evil fat guy named Kamar. He wants her and she was obviously disgusted by his pencil thin moustache and tells him jokingly that she would hook up with him once he became the Caliph of Baghdad. Dang woman! You never say something like that to a horny fat toad that happens to be the malevolent brother of the Caliph!

Kamar gets busted by his brother (Jon Hall as the Caliph) for trying to steal the throne (oh, is this yours?) which pretty much ends that crazy scheme, right? Wrong! Kamar’s cronies arrive to break him free and a fierce battle ensues. The Caliph ends up running through the city and jumping across buildings and generally doing one of those patented foot chases through Baghdad all these movies seem to have. He eventually gets tagged by arrow and he and a pursuer take a header off of building.

Luckily for the Caliph (street name: Haroun-Al-Raschid), someone witnessed his plight. It was a teenage boy called Ali Ben Ali (Sabu) and he just happened to be standing on his head atop a giant pyramid of circus folk while all this was going on. Like all pyramid schemes, this one collapses and Sabu goes rolling off into the alley and finds the Caliph all laid out, with a shoulder wound. He also sees the other guy is dead, his head crushed by a piece of falling building. Showing a set of street smarts that would be put to better use just rolling both guys for their jewels, credit cards, and cell phones, he immediately sizes up the situation and makes a snap decision.

He takes the ring that identifies Haroun as the Caliph and puts it on the guy who doesn’t have a head, then he gets Scheherazade to help him out with Haroun and convinces her and the rest of the circus to hightail it out of there before the guys that killed the Caliph can find them. He does all this without telling anyone who Haroun really is. He gives him a good shave to conceal his identity and when the Caliph wakes up, he and Ali decide they need to keep his real identity a secret for now. I’m guessing that Haroun was a really shy guy when he was Caliph since no one recognizes him when Ali hauls him around and before he shaves his beard.

With Kamar installed as the new Caliph, his brother believed to be dead, and all the magazines switched over to the new address, he turns his attention to getting his little stripper girlfriend back. His right hand man, who may have been named Nadan or who may have been named something else is told to get his old lady back. Nadan recognizes that if this little woman gets her hooks into the Caliph that his power will wane, so he hatches a sinister plot where he orders some of his men to find her and dispose of her. That’s all well and good, except that they take “dispose” to mean “sell into slavery” which is a bit of a botch, because it gets reported back to Kamar that Scheherazade has been sold into slavery, so he orders Nadan to go and get her.

As far as slavers go, I would have to say that while they appeared to have a professional operation (lots of cells, a thriving sale area, an auctioneer with pizzazz), they were actually quite the amateurs when it came to dealing with the likes of Sabu, Jon Hall, Billy Gilbert, Maria Montez and Shemp. First of all, somehow or other when they bring Scheherazade out to be put on the auction block she has a giant dagger with her. I don’t know about the rest of you guys with harems, but the only weapon I like my fillies to have is an ungrateful stare.

So she’s up there threatening this icky turd that if he tries to unveil her, she’ll stick him. I’m not sure why a chick whose job it is to entertain men with her slinky moves has suddenly gotten all modest, but she does have a dagger. Meanwhile, back in the jail cells, the rest of her crew are embroiled in their own crazy plots. First they got this big guy trying to pull a stone block out of the cell wall, then they decide to get the guards to do the job for them, by just opening the door. They use the old “guy having a seizure on the floor of the cell” routine that gets the guards to come in and see what the problem is and the next thing you know, circus folk are flooding the bidding arena and the fight is on.

Someone who has bid 1000 dinars (about seventeen bucks Canadian) for Scheherazade tries to hustle her away, but Ali gives Haroun the idea to use the rope. Everyone in the house knows what’s about to happen now. We’re only half way through the movie and the hero has already busted out the “swinging on the rope to save the babe” trick. Truly, this film is a classic in its field! Sadly, this would be the only time we would get to see this stunt, but you do get plenty of Billy Gilbert bopping his big belly against bad guys, accompanied by whacky sound effects.

Having rescued the girl, Haroun and everyone meets up down by the river where Haroun gets himself caught again. What follows is some transgender wackiness where Billy gets his beard shaved off and has to impersonate a woman to distract Kamar’s men. Must be seen to be believed.

By this time, Nadan is fed up with all this running around for Kamar and strikes a bargain with Scheherazade: he’ll let Haroun go if she’ll poison Kamar. Heck, I’d bet she’d have done it for free! She agrees, they free Haroun (they plan a doublecross though) and she is taken to this tent city that Kamar has erected for her. There’s a little dancing, a little slipping someone a roofie and a whole lot of rescuing! Somewhere along the way, Haroun has fallen in love with Scheherazade, but he hasn’t wanted to tell her his identity because he wants her to love him for who he is inside, not his social position.

What follows is some sword fights, horses running around, circus folks burning down a lot of tents, bad guys getting knifed and speared, and Sabu getting felt up by a harem of hotties. No wonder that sucker had a heart attack before he was forty! Oh yeah, Haroun ends up with Scheherazade , too.

The epitome of the Saturday afternoon adventure film, this one gets by because it knows what the audience wants from a movie like this: good looking sets, fast-paced action, and Maria Montez in harem pants and bikini top. Believe it or not this one got nominated for four Academy Awards back in 1943, (all technical categories and it didn’t win any), but don’t believe it’s that kind of good.

This was Universal’s first three-color Technicolor movie and they made good use of it, the sets being suitably colorful and exotic looking. Arabian Nights also stands out because of the yeoman-like work the supporting cast did. I don’t imagine there was much incentive to work too hard in a glorified B movie like this, especially if you weren’t the leads, but the work of most everyone involved (except for the badly miscast Leif Erickson as the not-very-threatening Kamar) was very good, with Sabu and Billy Gilbert being the standouts. Both of them were very engaging in their roles and the movie even managed to keep Shemp in check. He turns out to be a much less irritating Sinbad the Sailor than Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. was. Did I mention that Aladdin was even in this movie? He spends most of the movie rubbing lamps hoping that one of them is his lost magic one. An old time, empty-headed adventure film that’s a fun amalgamation of cliches and character actors.

© 2008 MonsterHunter