Leofwine_draca ARABIAN NIGHTS is a rather routine Hollywood adaptation of the Middle Eastern source material, made with a juvenile audience in mind. I guess the film-makers were attempting to distract contemporary audiences from all of the bad stuff going on around the world at the time, hence them making this very 'safe' piece of entertainment.Sadly, ARABIAN NIGHTS is simply too routine to be very entertaining. There's a silly, pantomime feel to the whole thing, a campiness that just wasn't there in other contemporary fare from the era. The film also seems to be a bit miscast in terms of the lead actors. Jon Hall is a dullish hero and Maria Montez, while acceptable, suffers from playing a one-dimensional Scheherazade. The romance stuff is sappy and boring.To my disappointment, there isn't any of the magical/effects type stuff to enjoy here, and nor is there much in the way of action. What we do get are some fun supporting turns from the likes of genre mainstay Sabu (underutilised, unfortunately), Shemp Howard randomly playing a comedic Sinbad, Turhan Bey, Laurel & Hardy comedy actor Billy Gilbert, and Leif Erickson.

mark.waltz The breath-taking color photography wins massive acclaim here in the first of the Maria Montez/Jon Hall/Sabu pairings where mostly American actors (and certainly none of Arabic background) put on traditional Islam attire and play dress-up in this cartoonish adventure. Made with the mentality of teenaged boys, this silly but often entertaining adventure, is certainly outlandish, but if you go in expecting realism, you will be sorely disappointed. Not as well made as "The Thief of Bagdad", this still has enough spark to make for a 90 minute trip into the world of fantasy. It deals with two brothers who hate each other (Hall and Leif Erickson) fighting over the role of Caliph which Hall achieved through being the legitimate heir and Erickson has tried to claim through the assistance of loyal followers willing to resort to the most evil efforts in order to dethrone Hall. When first seen, Erickson is strapped, hanging in mid-air, having tried to overthrow his brother, with hungry vultures waiting for the moment of death to occur. Of course, this never comes, and when Hall visits his brother, he shows a kindness which Erickson literally spits back into his face.Both Hall and Erickson are enamored of the beautiful dancer Montez who only wants to marry the true heir. When Erickson escapes, Hall is suddenly injured through a sudden thrust of an arrow, and Montez's acrobatic pal Sabu takes off his ring in an attempt to save his life. Not revealing his real identity, the recovering Hall must now reclaim his throne, and this leads to a battle between brothers to the death. In the meantime, there's a ton of juvenile style comedy, especially in the casting of Billy Gilbert as the head of Sabu's acrobatic troop. You know the only weapon Gilbert will most likely use is his big belly which as you guess gives an added sound effect every time he thrusts it out to "boink" somebody off of him. Then there's Shemp Howard as an aging Sinbad and John Qualen as an aging Aladdin, still searching for his lost lamp. One funny moment has Qualen rubbing a lamp he's found and the apparent emergence of a genie.Still, the scene-stealer of this colorful caper is the always magnetic Sabu whose youthful personality and beautiful body are exposed while Hall seems to look on in envy. Sabu and Montez were created for movies like this, and even when they become too silly to believe, they retain a youthful innocence that makes them absolutely charming and a lot of fun to watch. It's always obvious how things are going to turn out, and there is about as much realism and historical fact as there is the believability of the casting, but ultimately, that does not matter at all. World War II audiences thrived on fantastic stories like this, and despicable villains that in the end we knew would be defeated and destroyed, much like the villains that the allies were determined to defeat all over the world.

delta-em With mediocre acting, sets that appeared to be made out of cardboard and very corny dialogue, I don't see how anyone could recommend this movie. While the story of 1001 Nights (or otherwise called, Arabian Nights) is usually fascinating, this retelling, or rather gross distortion, is totally unbelievable and sometimes even boring. While some of the characters had the same names as some of those from the book or other movies, their resemblance to anyone in the original story is virtually non-existent. There were a couple plot parallels that helped the story, but even those could not save this movie. It's very had to believe this movie was nominated for several Academy Awards. Save your money and get the book or at least another retelling, called Arabian Nights, with Mili Avital, John Leguizamo and Jason Scott Lee.

MARIO GAUCI I had long wanted to revisit this one since my one and only viewing of it had occurred long ago (back in the mid-1980s) and given that I am partial to Arabian Nights extravaganzas. Frankly, I was very disappointed that Universal decided to issue this one on DVD by itself a couple of years ago instead of releasing a Franchise Collection comprising several of its equally colorful follow-ups from the same studio; in the end, I didn't pick the disc up but, in view of the problematic copy I eventually ended up with, it would perhaps had been wiser if I did! In fact, when I first acquired it on DivX, there were severe lip-synch problems; this was remedied when I eventually converted it onto DVD-R but then there was intermittent jerkiness to the picture. Furthermore, when I played it on my Pioneer model, the picture froze with a loud buzz…thankfully, this was not repeated when I placed it into my cheaper DVD player and even the jitters were less conspicuous! Anyway, this movie has a lot to answer for: it was the ideal form of cinematic escapism for WWII picturegoers and reaped big box office returns for Universal which ensured that they went back to the desert of Arabia for many more times thereafter in the next decade or so. Despite the generic title, the film isn't actually a filmic depiction of one of the classic stories but rather Universal's own concoction with every known ingredient thrown into the mix for added value: so it is that historical figures (Haroun-Al-Raschid) rub shoulders with mythical ones (Sinbad, Aladdin, Scheherazade) and are subverted or sanitized into the process. Dashing hero Jon Hall plays Haroun-Al-Raschid as a deposed Caliph seeking to regain his throne usurped by his villainous and seemingly love-crazed brother (Leif Ericson); the object of his unrequited affections is Scheherazade – which is actually misspelled in the credits! – played by the iconic "Queen of Technicolor" Maria Montez. Sinbad and Aladdin, then, are incongruously but humorously portrayed as amiable buffoons by familiar character actors John Qualen and Shemp Howard respectively; the latter is always on the point of spinning one of his seafaring yarns yet again before being shut up by his ill-tempered circus employer Billy Gilbert! The third lead role is taken by exotic Indian star Sabu who had already visited this territory in the quintessential Arabian Nights tale (and definitive film), the magnificent Alexander Korda production of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940); what the film under review lacks in comparison to the latter is the omission of wizardry and special effects.As I said, this formula proved so successful that Universal reunited variations of the star combo several times afterwards – WHITE SAVAGE (1943), ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1944), COBRA WOMAN (1944; see above), GYPSY WILDCAT (1944), SUDAN (1945; also helmed by Rawlins) and TANGIER (1946). Another measure of its being welcome at the time of release is the fact that ARABIAN NIGHTS was nominated for 4 Academy Awards in these categories: art direction-set decoration, cinematography (this was Universal's first three-strip Technicolor production and, over 60 years later, the colors still leap off the screen), music (Frank Skinner's score is appropriately rousing) and sound recording. In this context, the choice of John Rawlins as director – best known for the rather weak SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE VOICE OF TERROR (1942) – was a curious one but, in hindsight, he conducted the proceedings very capably.