spotted-owl "A Thousand and One Nights" (1945) is a fun, campy version of Arabian Nights. It is a visually stunning Technicolor film, with lavish costumes and sets, witty dialog, a red-haired female genie, a cute dog, a sinister giant, a sword fight, songs and exotic Arabian dancers.Aladdin (played by Cornel Wilde) is dashing and athletic. He falls in love with blonde Princess Armina, daughter of the Sultan. Beautiful brunette Novira is one of Armina's many lovely handmaidens. Comedian Phil Silvers is great as Aladdin's friend Abdullah, who makes a lot of witty, 1940s slang wisecracks. (It is said that Abdullah was born 1,200 years before his time, hence his knowledge of 1940s culture.) Aladdin finds a red-haired female genie named Babs to help him marry Princess Armina. However, things get complicated when the genie falls in love with Aladdin, and the Grand Wazir wants to marry the princess.Aladdin and Abdullah have some interesting adventures. The two friends are chased on horseback at the Vasquez Rocks. In the spooky cave of a sorcerer, they are stalked by a giant (Rex Ingram). They also meet a tailor with six beautiful red-haired seamstresses.Aladdin's sword fight is excellent. Cornel Wilde was on the U.S. Olympic fencing team in 1936, and the sword fight is very dramatic.The costumes are over-the-top spectacular. Princess Armina and her handmaidens wear colorful glittery gowns. Her wedding dress, with fringe and a huge chiffon skirt, practically floats around her. Genie Babs looks great with her bright red hair and blue-green outfits. There are also exotic Arabian dancers, and songs.The sets are lavish. The palace has ornate gates and balconies. Outside scenes were filmed at the Vasquez Rocks. This film received Oscar nominations for Best Art Direction and Best Special Effects. I hope a DVD is released soon.

mark.waltz As if the Maria Montez/Jon Hall/Sabu color fests dealing with similar tales over at Universal weren't camp enough, Columbia gives us this "Hellzapoppin'" type spoof,a jive-talking', slang filled satire that is only missing Robert Hays responding, "Shirley, You Can't Be Serious!". From the moment the bespeckled Phil Silvers comes on screen (glasses weren't invented until 500 years after this takes place!), you know you are in for a wacky ride. His references to Lana Turner and television simply confirm that. Cornel Wilde is Aladdin, the handsome beefy hero who loves the Sultan's daughter (Adele Jergens) after invading her caravan and has won her love as well. But evil is afoot, and after dealing with giant Rex Ingram (repeating his role from "The Thief of Bagdad"), Wilde and Silvers find the lamp an evil sorcerer has sent them looking for, and find it contains the beautiful but wise-cracking Evelyn Keyes. As far removed from "Gone With the Wind's" Tara (where Keyes played Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister) as she could get, Keyes falls in love with Wilde and schemes in her teasing way to prevent him from winning the princess. The story cleverly utilizes aspects of the Arabian Knights tales ("New lamps for old", in particularly) with genuine satire, and is as colorful as the Rita Hayworth musicals that Columbia was turning out. In certain shots, Jergens seems to be photographed and made up exactly as Hayworth was in "Cover Girl".Columbia took a break from its string of Robin Hood adventure yarns for this sword & sandal fest, and came up with a winner. Wilde is a charming hero, Jergens a sweet but spunky princess, and Keyes going down Eve Arden territory with a touch of teenie bopper crush thrown in. Silvers provides some humor that may be considered dated, but some of his gags are timeless. There are enough villains to give Disney's "Aladdin's" Jafar a run for his money, although on closer examination, the plot of the movie resembles "The Lion King". The ending provides one of the funniest gags on screen imaginable.

yousei-usagi I don't know how to vote on it yet, so I picked the middle. All I was going to say is that it would be nice if they would caption it so we deaf and hearing-impaired people could enjoy too, it because it looks like a fun movie.I am happy with the fact that most of the movies now on TCM have been captioned for our enjoyment. I can read lips somewhat but when the camera is turned away I lose the rest of the sentence. Also, captioning is much easier on the eyes and keeps that break in dialog from happening.I would like to say that before "talkies" I bet more deaf people attended theaters. I still like to go even though I can't tell what is going on most of the time. I would love it if all movie theaters were subtitled for us. They would make even more money than they do now on premiers at the box office for new movies.

vandino1 Columbia Pictures may not have had the stars to populate this film like MGM or Warners would have, but they knew how to have some fun with what they had. Sure, it's splashed with expensive Technicolor and has lots of costumes and effects (the effects winning an Academy Award for Lawrence W. Butler), but its feeble cast features Evelyn Keyes, Cornel Wilde and Phil Silvers. Not exactly box-office, although Wilde was one of the hot new stars of 1945. But it's Keyes and Silvers who make this film enjoyable, even if their lack of star value keeps this film from being noticed today.It's the umpteenth variation of the 'Aladdin and the Lamp' story, but this one is hoked up with plenty of anachronisms, chiefly in the form of Phil Silvers who plays Aladdin's thief buddy as an All-American wiseguy complete with the latest 40's slang and a pair of modern eyeglasses. And when Aladdin gets hold of the famous lamp (after a scene wherein he and Silvers dodge a giant played by Rex Ingram, who virtually reprises his character from 1940's 'Thief of Baghdad') out pops the genie played by Evelyn Keyes. And she's a sassy sprite who likes to be called "Babs." Since she's invisible to all but the owner of the lamp, she gets to mess around with others and sling wisecracks and warnings at Aladdin, to his discomfort. Sandwiched between Silvers and Keyes, poor Wilde is nothing more than a handsome grinning prop. At least his fencing skills come into play in a climactic duel.The story includes the requisite villain, in this case played by Dennis Hoey (most famous as Inspector Lestrade in the Sherlock Homes series) in a duel role as a Sultan and his scheming twin-brother Prince. Adele Jergens plays the Sultan's daughter who naturally falls for Aladdin because he's so gorgeous and sings love songs to her (Wilde's singing voice dubbed). Jergens is not very interesting (looking like a pale imitation of Virginia Mayo) and to be honest, in my estimation, is strangely overshadowed by the striking looks of her chief maid played by Dusty Anderson. Neither of them became movie stars, but Anderson's looks and voice are so much more impressive than Jergens that it distracts from Wilde's pursuit of the Princess. In my view, why take a chance on being executed for trying to possess a moderately pretty Princess when the maid is a knockout, and likable too? (One small note: Shelley Winters plays a fellow handmaiden in this film, but good luck finding her. I think I spotted her in the back row of a group of maidens in a scene near the end of the film).Interesting line: Phil Silvers looks into a sorcerer's crystal ball and sees himself robbing someone. He quips to Wilde re: the Sorceror: "This guy has run into television and don't know it." Since no pretense is made that this is anything other than a silly romp, Silvers gets to gag it up with plenty of other current references, including the absurd ending wherein he croons a Sinatra tune ("All or Nothing at All" and using the actual Sinatra recording) to handmaidens in bobbysoxer footwear. Needless to say, this a fun movie, easy to like.