Universal Pictures may have wrapped their series of exotic, campy, TechniColored romantic adventures with cult favorite Maria Montez in PIRATES OF MONTEREY/’47, but they weren’t done with the formula, sliding Maureen O’Hara into BAGDAD/’49 and this Arabian Nights fantasy. (It’s supposed to be Tunisia, North Africa, but what does geography matter when you’ve got tempestuous Irish redhead O’Hara as a Middle-Eastern Princess in American SouthWest locations?) Longtime hack Charles Lamont, who’d worked himself all the way up to ABBOTT & COSTELLO and MA AND PA KETTLE pics, directs in an unfussy manner that lets everyone in on the joke, O’Hara and Bedouin lover Jeff Chandler relish their silly, poetic dialogue as frenemies out to trap a world class wild horse. Meanwhile, O’Hara’s destined to be a bartered bride (maybe to oafish Lon Chaney Jr., yikes!) after her father is poisoned and a horse race will decide her fate. Those horses giving Maureen quite a run for the money in the looks department. Maybe Chandler should just go off to his desert home with one of the horses. Maureen was luckier, running off next year with Johns Wayne & Ford to Ireland for a career rescue in next year’s THE QUIET MAN/’52.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: With the traditional keffiyeh (Arab headdress) covering his prematurely grey locks, Jeff Chandler never looked so young on screen. Quite a shock when he finally takes it off in the penultimate reel.
WATCH THIS, NOT THAT: See Burt Lancaster & Jacques Tourneur make a real show out of this sort of thing with another FLAMING adventure in THE FLAME AND THE ARROW/’50 a year earlier. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2008/05/flame-and-arrow-1950.html
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