ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942)

First (and best?) of three popular escapist entertainments made at Universal for that most exotic of screen trios: Sabu as the scamp, Jon Hall as the hunk and the mysterious Maria Montez for sex appeal.  (Hall may not look exotic, but Mom was a Tahitian Princess!)  Wartime anxiety no doubt helped put these things over, but this Thousand & One Nights tale has a lot going for it.  Mostly its storybook TechniColor look, courtesy of cinematographer Milton Krasner (later first choice for directors as different as Minnelli & Mankiewicz), especially in the first act where matte shots, miniatures & painted cycloramas give this Hollywood Bagdad the quality of a child’s cherished die-cut Pop-Up Illustrated volume, the kind that barely survive a kid’s heavy hand.  Now looking wonderful in restored prints, lighter, airier than the later ones shot by Krasner’s assistants.  (Like W. Howard Greene, Oscar’d next year for his glutinous 1943 PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.  He did one of the two follow-ups: WHITE SAVAGE 43 or COBRA WOMAN 44.)  The plot?  Well, you see everyone is vying for the throne that rightly belongs to Jon Hall.  He’s been reported dead, but is really in disguise (thanks to clever Sabu) to see if Montez’s crown-loving Sherazade could love him for himself.  Leif Erickson’s the usurper, Billy Gilbert’s comic relief (with a bouncing stomach punch), Shemp Howard (!) a loyal follower and John Qualen a blue-eyed Alladin on the hunt for his missing magic lamp.  At 86", this one not a moment too long.

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  Check out all our Montez pics here.  Note, whichever one you are watching lowers your I.Q to the point where you think that’s her best!   https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/search?q=montez 

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  Presumably, our German poster (see above) didn’t come out till after the war.

COBRA WOMAN (1944)

Eye-popping TechniColor, backlot studio artifice, campy fabulist adventure, just the ticket for unlikely Hollywood film star Maria Montez.  Half a dozen films with aquatic consort Jon Hall during the war years, and, if you were lucky, Sabu as sidekick, besting villains, inane plots & strapless everything.  This one tops of the divinely silly lot, with Montez kidnaped by Lon Chaney Jr. on her wedding day and taken to the island of her birth where younger identical twin sister is the despotic ruler.  You’ll guess the rest of the plot, but not the decor; the nightclub floor show passing as ritual cobra dance (backup chorus-line in blue); fire-breathing mountain; a dozen more near death experiences for all three.  And with stylish director Robert Siodmak calling the shots*, unexpectedly specific setups that almost make sense of the nonsensical plot & island logistics, serving up the shortest running time of the series.  A plus because while you wouldn’t want to miss it (especially in HD), you may also find that one is quite enough.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY: *More than other directors in these films, Siodmak emphasizes music over adventure,  as if Montez were a beautiful Carmen Miranda whose run at 20th/Fox mirrored these in color saturation & brief popularity.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Hard to imagine serious, issue-oriented Richard Brooks co-scripted.  Even harder to imagine calm, sophisticated French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont married to Montez.

ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1943)

It took a World War to make (and sustain) the unlikely stardom of TechniColor beauty Maria Montez.  The campy, exotic adventure films she made for Universal in the ‘40s, especially when co-starred with blandly handsome Jon Hall and impish Sabu, were a perfect fit for wartime anxiety.  And though she continued making films till her early death in 1951 (only 41), her time had already passed.  ALI BABA, from 1943 now seems her best, certainly the best introduction, but is perhaps less well known than the ones with Sabu.  (Turhan Bey takes over his regular spot, and quite well.)  Easy to see why it holds up so well since, after a prologue that has the young Caliph watch his father’s murder, discover the secret cave of the Forty Thieves and get newly christened (if that’s the right word for an Arabic fable!) as Ali Baba, the bulk of the film, neatly paced by director Arthur Lubin, is pretty much lifted story beat by story beat/character by character from Warners' THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD/’38.*  Even Jon Hall, bringing Errol Flynn dash to his grown up Ali Baba, Andy Devine in for Alan Hale, a public rescue from certain death, a dastardly usurper . . . and so on.  Alas, Montez ain’t no Olivia de Havilland in the kidnaped princess turned helpmate/lover department.  But then, who is?*

DOUBLE-BILL/LINK:  *See for yourself in ROBIN HOOD with the whole unbeatable Warner Bros gang.   (Note: Hold off on more Montez; her films best seen in long-spaced intervals.) https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-adventures-of-robin-hood-1938.html

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Another ripoff comes when the outlaws sing their fighting song while riding thru the desert on horseback.  These guys not only robbing the wealthy Khan villians, but also composer Sigmund Romberg whose ‘Riff Song’ from his operetta THE DESERT SONG serves as a too close for comfort inspiration.

THE FLAME OF ARABY (1951)

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

THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGET (1942)

The real mystery on this little detective thriller (a decent enough programmer once the lead is offed) is why Edgar Allan Poe’s trio of Paris crime stories for proto-detective C. Auguste Dupin, the Rosetta Stone of ratiocination tales, haven’t been adapted by the usual suspects. We should be on the third or fourth PBS/Mystery iteration by now. True, the little stories need expanding, but that hardly disqualifies them from BBC/PBS attention. Heck, last time ‘round they added a prologue to Dickens’ not exactly narrative-starved OLIVER TWIST. And what of the plotty back-flips for THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD? As for this MYSTERY, well, Universal didn’t exactly go all out. Director Phil Rosen, a Monogram Pictures stalwart, proves a dull dog, though he does perk up a bit on backlot exteriors, just don’t hope for much Parisian flavor. Patric Knowles makes for an amusingly disengaged Dupin, here a sort of forensic chemical doctor; and the ancient Maria Ouspenskaya, as the victim’s ambivalent mother, retains her odd manner of looking past her fellow players. (No doubt searching for old pals from the Moscow Art Players.) Plus the always slightly bizarre Maria Montez as Marie Roget in her last near-normal role before Universal figured out how to properly use her (and TechniColor!) in a series of deliriously silly adventure pics.

DOUBLE-BILL: MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE is the Poe/Dupin story that gets all the feature & tv attention (’86; ‘71; ‘54; ‘32), none too happily.