ARABIAN NIGHTS

Jon Hall and Maria Montez

ARABIAN NIGHTS (1942). Director: John Rawlins. 
 

Sentenced to a slow death for trying to usurp the throne from his brother, Kamar (Leif Erickson) escapes and holds court in the palace while the true king, Haroun (Jon Hall of The Invisible Man's Revenge), goes on the run until he can regain his rightful position. Kamar is in love with the dancer Sherazade (Maria Montez) -- a different version of the Sheherazade of legend -- but before he can find her she is sold into slavery. As Sherazade and Haroun fall in love, they escape from slave traders and other nefarious characters until Kamar at last reclaims his chosen bride. But will true love win out in the end or is Haroun doomed to die? Young Ali (Sabu) will certainly do all he can to unite the lovers. 

Hall gets some wise counsel from Sabu

Universal may not have been in the same league as MGM when it came to gloss and pageantry, but they certainly gave it the old college try with Arabian Nights. The film is often beautifully photographed (Milton R. Krasner) in positively gorgeous -- and very expensive -- technicolor with striking desert vistas and impressive matte paintings. Frank Skinner's exciting score is flavored with the occasional "Arabian" touch. Jon Hall and Leif Erickson make a fine pair of literally dueling brothers, Sabu is as appealing as ever as the young Ali, and Edgar Barrier [Phantom of the Opera] is properly loathsome as Kamar's plotting associate, Nadan. 

The Montez gives a smoldering look

As for Maria Montez? The movie is populated by starlets just as attractive if not more so than Montez, although she is certainly very decorative, as they say. One thing you must say about the woman is that she has a haughty, imperious authority -- possibly the way she was off-screen as well -- that works very well for her in parts like these. Her arrogance and self-confidence come through with her every line reading, which are generally on target. No, she's no Kate Hepburn, but one could hardly see Hepburn in this role (although she might have been better than one might imagine)! In other words, while no Oscar would have been in the offing for Ms. Montez, she is more than acceptable as Sherazade. 

A striking sequence from Arabian Nights

There are other characters, some from the Arabian Nights, sprinkled throughout the movie. Sinbad, presented as a lazy lout instead of as a hero, is played by Shemp Howard, one of the Three Stooges! Aladdin (John Qualen) spends the movie trying to find his famous lamp and failing. Turhan Bey is cast as a captain in the King's army who comes to a bitter fate. As Ahmed, who runs a shop, Billy Gilbert overacts atrociously. Gilbert's scenes sometimes resemble something out of Abbott and Costello. Sherazade does a very expressive and sensual dance late in the movie, but apparently that was not Montez, who could neither sing nor dance. 

Verdict: A Maria Montez movie that is actually good! ***. 

RACKET SQUAD

Reed Hadley

RACKET SQUAD (1951 - 1953).

"There are people who can slap you on the back with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. And it could happen to you." -- John Braddock.  

Racket Squad was a very popular half hour TV show from the fifties that exposed bunco operations and lasted three seasons and 98 episodes. Reed Hadley [Sunset Murder Case] played Captain John Braddock, who introduced and narrated the episodes, and often took part in the story lines as well, such as one episode when he's nearly blown up in a mine explosion. Racket Squad was a snappy series that educated the public about schemes that are still going on today (imagine what a modern version of the show could make of Internet rackets). The best episodes focused not just on clever and occasionally diabolical schemes but the characters that got embroiled in them, including the criminals and the often gullible and sometimes greedy victims.

Hillary Brooke in Lady Luck

Among the most memorable episodes: "A Place for Grandma," with Mabel Paige as an elderly woman taken advantage of by the nasty woman who runs a boarding house; "The Case of Two Little Country Girls," which details an amazing scheme to rip off a hotel of thousands of dollars;  "The Christmas Caper," in which a kind man (Lloyd Corrigan) is exploited by people running a crooked charity for children; "The Family Tree," with Hugh Beaumont as a phony genealogist trying to scam Frances Bavier; "Miracle Mud," in which a phony health farm scheme is engineered by an unlikely suspect; "Sting of Fate," in which a couple scams a hotel with a fake ankle injury; "The Longshot," featuring a stupid old gambling woman with a fake Irish Sweepstakes ticket; "The Case of the Expensive Tumble," in which a high school boy is victimized by a gang who stage phony accidents and the resulting insurance fraud; "Lady Luck," with Hillary Brooke [Heatwave] as a woman who just can't stop cheating at cards; and "Pick a Number," with Byron Foulger playing a clearinghouse accountant who is innocently pulled into a dangerous scheme plotted by Edgar Barrier.

Garner and Gleason in His Brother's Keeper

Of the episodes I've seen, the most outstanding are "The Soft Touch," in which con artists, thinking the others are pigeons, try to out-con each other at a hotel, proving -- as Hadley puts it -- that anyone can be taken; and the moving "His Brother's Keeper" in which James Gleason [Spring Reunion] expertly plays an old bum who bonds with a boy (Don Garner) when both are forced into a phony begging racket in this grim tale of the exploitation of the homeless.  

Reed Hadley -- tough but compassionate, firm but fair -- makes the perfect lead for the show. After Racket Squad ended its run the unconventionally handsome actor sort of switched sides and became The Public Defender. 

Verdict: Nifty old crime show is worth a watch. ***.

PRINCESS OF THE NILE

Debra Paget and Jeffrey Hunter

PRINCESS OF THE NILE (1954). Director: Harmon Jones.

Egypt 1249 A.D. Princess Shalimar (Debra Paget of The River's Edge) is supposedly confined to the palace, but she sneaks out at night via an underwater passageway and becomes the super-sensual dancer, Taura. It is in the tavern where she dances that Shalimar first encounters equally gorgeous Prince Haidi (Jeffrey Hunter of Man-Trap) of Bagdad, as well as the nasty Bedouin, Rana Khan (Michael Rennie). Shalimar's weak father is under the thumb of his shaman (Edgar Barrier), who is in league with Rama Khan and would also like Haidi out of the picture. After all sorts of palace intrigue, Khan tells Shalimar he will spare her loved ones if she will marry him, a fate truly worse than death ... Princess of the Nile offers a starring role for Paget, who gives an authoritative and sexy performance; a hot love couple in Paget and Hunter (who is equally good and quite romantic); two "bodies beautiful" for the price of one; and also boasts solid work from Rennie, Barrier, and Wally Cassell as the good-humored slave, Goghi. Dona Drake [Beyond the Forest] is also on hand as a helpful handmaiden and good friend to Shalimar. (Other handmaidens include Merry Anders and Honey Bruce Friedman of Dance Hall Racket). Billy Curtis plays the lovable little guy, Tut. Princess of the Nile is a minor film, but it is fast-paced and entertaining (and quite short at 70 minutes) and both the locales and attractive leads are very nice to look at in Technicolor. Six years later Paget was cast as Cleopatra's Daughter. Harmon Jones also directed Gorilla at Large. 

Verdict: Two sexy lead actors never hurt. **1/2. 

THE ADVENTURES OF SMILIN' JACK

Jay Novello, Tom Brown, Marjorie Lord, Rose Hobart

 THE ADVENTURES OF SMILIN' JACK (13 chapter Columbia serial/ 1943). Directed by Lewis D. Collins and Ray Taylor. 

Columbia turned the popular aviation comic strip The Adventures of Smilin' Jack into a serial in 1943. In this exciting and action-packed cliffhanger,  Jack Martin (Tom Brown) is working in China just before the U.S. entry into WW2.  Mah Ling (Cyril Delevanti of The Night of the Iguana), the governor of Handan, a province of China in the Himalayas, knows the secret route of a passage into India which would be helpful to the allies. The Japanese group, the Black Samurais, a division of Axis Espionage, is anxious to get this secret as well. The Samurais are under the uneasy control of a German agent, Fraulein Von Teufel (Rose Hobart of Conflict), who is better-known to the allies as "Trudi Miller," a war correspondent. We learn early on in the serial that Trudi is a ruthless double agent, but neither Jack, his friend, Tommy (Edgar Barrier), nor his sister, Janet (Marjorie Lord), are aware of this. It seems that in every other episode the evil Fraulein is reminding Kageyama (Turhan Bey) that she is in charge of the Samurais despite the fact that she is German. Philip Ahn is Wu Tan, the loving aide to the elderly Mah Ling; Keye Luke is Captain Wing; and Sidney Toler is cast as the Chinese general, Kai Ling. The ever-versatile Jay Novello is a cast stand-out as the Japanese saboteur Kushimi, and David Hoffman [The Creeper] also scores as the weasel-like Blenker.  With his pudgy face and kind of geeky voice, Tom Brown is hardly perfect casting as the sleek, handsome Smilin' Jack, but his performance is okay, while Lord and Barrier are adept enough in somewhat pointless secondary roles. Rose Hobart, on the other hand, while lacking the viciousness and sensuality of Carol Forman of Black Widow, is quietly effective and quite venomous as the steel-hearted Fraulein, and pretty much walks off with the serial (even if she is saddled with a highly unflattering headpiece). At one point the Fraulein suspends Jack in a net in the water below a trap door, even as the tide comes in and sharp floating spikes rise up higher and higher toward his back. Tom also plunges out of a plane to find that his parachute won't open, and is locked into a leaky box that is thrown into the river. In two of the best cliffhangers, a clipper ship holding our hero and friends crashes into the ocean, letting in gallons of rushing water; and a Japanese sub with Jack and the others aboard is rammed by a huge ship that is also controlled by Jap agents. An amusing aspect of the serial is that Mah Ling seems to take forever to make up his mind to give up the secret of the Mandan route and comes up with one obstacle after another to prevent him from divulging it. With the participation of such actors as Hobart, Luke, Toler, Bey and others, Similin' Jack has a better and better-known cast for a serial than usual. 

Verdict: Decidedly one of the better Universal serials. ***. 

SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES

Stooges

SNOW WHITE AND THE THREE STOOGES (1961). Director: Walter Lang.

The evil queen (Patricia Medina) imprisons her stepdaughter, Snow White (Carol Heiss), because the queen's mirror tells her she is the more beautiful of the two. Meanwhile Prince Charming (Edson Stroll) was banished as a boy and is now a traveling player with his adoptive fathers, the Three Stooges (Joe DeRita, Larry Fine, Moe Howard), who also sell the tonic "Yuk.". When the prince discovers who he is, he determines to rescue the princess and gain back his kingdom, but the queen and Count Oga (Guy Rolfe) may put a crimp in his plans. Snow White and the Three Stooges is a very odd Stooges feature, in that there's not much of their trademark shtick, and the movie is more or less played straight! True, there have been plenty of comedies where the comedians mug while the other cast members play it seriously, but the Stooges normally made farcical films and in a lot of this picture there is not even an attempt to garner laughs. Carol Heiss was an Olympic-class figure skater -- a skating sequence is the highlight of the movie -- but while she's perfectly competent in this she only made one movie. Edson Stroll [The Three Stooges in Orbit] makes an excellent Prince Charming; Medina [The Magic Carpet] is nastily effective (as the queen), as is Rolfe [Mr. Sardonicus]; and there are also roles for Marie Blake as a nursemaid; Buddy Baer as a soldier; Edgar Barrier as the briefly-seen king; and Mel Blanc as the voice of the puppet, Quinto. The Stooges aren't given enough to do and the film is less of a parody than a rather dark fantasy film. The stooges have no problem capably handling the more "dramatic" scenes. Kids were probably bored long before the halfway mark; I was. The songs by Harry Barris  are vaguely pleasant but undistinguished. This is one of several sixties films the Stooges made when their careers were revived by television showings of their older short comedies.

Verdict: Not awful, but not the best of the Stooges, either. **1/2.

TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN

TARZAN AND THE LEOPARD WOMAN (1946). Director: Kurt Neumann.

Sworn to bring back Tarzan's body for fiendish jungle ritual! -- ad copy.

If only Tarzan and the Leopard Woman had delivered on the promise of its advertising tagline, even if it does, in a way, sum up the plot. High Priestess Lea (Acquanetta of Jungle Woman) of the Bogandis is working in cahoots with native-born Dr. Ameer Lazar (Edgart Barrier). The doctor feigns friendliness with the townspeople of Zambeza but is really out for vengeance. Lea and Lazar lead a group of cultists who wear leopard skins and claws to make it look as if real leopards are tearing apart their victims. Lea's young brother, Kimba (Tommy Cook), hopes to prove his manhood by stealing away someone's heart, and shows up at Tarzan's enclave pretending to be homeless and hungry. Boy (Johnny Sheffield) is suspicious about Kimba and the two have a fight, with Cheeta entering the fray. Lazar has several nubile schoolgirls kidnapped to be sacrifices, and also plans on killing Tarzan (Johnny Weissmuller), Boy, and Jane (Brenda Joyce). The best performance is delivered by little Tommy Cook, who previously appeared as the native boy Kimbu  in the excellent serial Jungle Girl, then grew up to amass 100 credits in such films as Missile to the Moon. Although the Tarzan series had become more kid-friendly by this time, Kimba's ultimate fate is rather grim. The other performances are pretty much what you would expect; Edgar Barrier is Edgar Barrier.

Verdict: Acceptable Tarzan flick with a not-bad finale. **1/2.

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Claude Rains

PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1943), Director: Arthur Lubin.

Handsome Technicolor version of the silent classic stars the great Claude Rains as Erique Claudin, who loves the pretty singer Christine (Susanna Foster), paying for her lessons in secret, but has a tragic and fateful misunderstanding with a music publisher that results in the latter's death and Claudin getting a face full of corrosive acid. Thereafter he haunts the Paris Opera in a cloak and mask committing murders to advance the career of Christine. Nelson Eddy, in fine voice, plays lead baritone and love interest, Anatole. Edgar Barrier has what is probably his best and biggest part in movies as Inspector Doubert, who not only investigates the murders but is Anatole's rival for Christine. Fritz Feld, Fritz Lieber, and Steven Geray all have supporting roles and all are good. The horror aspects of the story are fairly muted with the exception of a well-executed scene with the chandelier crashing into the audience; Lubin was hardly the best choice for director. Still the film is good to look at, Rains is as excellent as ever [Barrier and the others are also more than acceptable], and there's some wonderful music and singing. The French opera [actually a German opera sung in French] is the third act of Flowtow's Martha. The Russian opera was cobbled together from Tchiakovsky's 4th symphony even though there were plenty of Russian operas, including Tchiakovsky's, to choose from.Very attractive settings.

Verdict: Not all it could have been but quite entertaining. ***.

CORNERED

CORNERED (1945). Director: Edward Dmytryk. 

Laurence Gerard (Dick Powell), a Canadian shot down over France and helped by the underground, learns that the resistance fighter he married and hardly knew was murdered along with many others under the orders of a collaborationist named Jarnac -- who is supposedly dead. Gerard travels to Buenos Aires to find Jarnac, even though he doesn't know what he looks like or what name he might be using. Helping and hindering along the way are Jarnac's widow (Micheline Cheirel), the hostess Mrs. Camargo (Nina Vale), her mousy husband (Steven Geray), a shady tourist guide (Walter Slezak of Lifeboat), and the sinister Dr. Satana (Morris Carnovsky). Even Edgar Barrier and Nestor Paiva get into the act as, respectively, an insurance agent and a police official. Powell and Slezak give terrific performances, with a sharp assist from Luthor Adler and the rest of the supporting cast. The movie is unpredictable and basically absorbing, though it has no great Hitchcock-like set-pieces and is rather talky at times. Still, it is undeniably intriguing and has an exciting climax. NOTE: Cornered is one of the eight films on Warner brothers' Film Noir Classic Collection Volume 5. 

Verdict: Powell proves again that he's not just a song and dance man. ***.

JUKE BOX RHYTHM

JUKE BOX RHYTHM (1959). Director: Arthur Dreifuss.

So Princess Ann (Jo Morrow) has come to New York to find a coronation gown and she winds up getting into a wild swing thing with handsome Riff Manton (Jack Jones, son of Allan Jones). Riff is the son of down-on-his-luck Broadway producer George Manton (Brian Donlevy), who is keeping time not with Riff's mother (Marjorie Reynolds) but with a hotter blonde (Karin Booth) -- for shame. Then we mustn't forget former junk man Balenko (Hans Conreid) who fancies himself the greatest fashion designer in the world. He thinks Riff and the princess are "just like that" and asks him to somehow get Her Highness to look at his designs. But will the princess' uppity Aunt Margaret (Freida Inescort) allow it?

So let's see. We've got Freida Inescort of Return of the Vampire, Brian Donlevy of the Quatermass films, "Mr. Livermore" of I Love Lucy (Hans Conreid), Edgar Barrier of The Giant Claw, Fritz Feld of a zillion features (almost always playing the same role and doing it well) and the son of Allan Jones -- all in the same movie!

Jack Jones [dig that groovy haircut!] can act and has a pleasing personality, so it's a wonder his movie career didn't go further. Jo Morrow (who also appeared in 13 Ghosts) is decorative [she's the ginchiest!] and competent. Donlevy and Conred are fine, which is to be expected. Inescort adds a touch of class to the proceedings, which are perfectly amiable and utterly forgettable.

Low point: George Jessel shows up, tells bad jokes, and sings -- very badly!

Verdict: You probably won't dig it the most but some might think Jones is "the most"! **.

THE GIANT CLAW

THE GIANT CLAW (1957). Director: Fred F. Sears. "I'll never call my mother-in-law an old crow again!" 

A gargantuan bird from outer space with an anti-matter shield shows up on Earth where it attacks planes, lifts cars and trains off of the ground, pops screaming parachutists into its mouth, and knocks over skyscrapers. Not good. Pilot Mitch MacAfee (Jeff Morrow), scientist Sally Caldwell (Mara Corday). Lt. General Considine (Morris Ankrum) and Dr. Karol Noymann (the bizarre Edgar Barrier) team up to destroy "the big bird." As it has some horrific elements and good sequences, this might have amounted to an outstanding monster movie had the FX department come up with a monster (pictured) that didn't look as stupid as the one in The Giant Claw. The actors are more than competent, considering. SHAMELESS PLUG. You can read more about this movie in my new book Creature Features: Nature Turned Nasty in the Movies. Available at amazon.com and at the publisher's website. 

Verdict: Despite its deficiencies, this pic is a lot of fun. ***.