Magic Carpet Ride with a Genie

THE THIEF OF BAGDAD (1940)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

I remember seeing "The Thief of Bagdad" when I was a kid and I marveled at the sights of a magic carpet, a giant 70-foot genie, the eyes of Jaffar, the flying mechanical horse, and essentially the colorful world of an Arabian Nights fantasy brought to life. Seeing it so many years later (and mistakenly thinking that the genie was a blue-skinned one), "The Thief of Bagdad" is a marvelous feast for the eyes and the ears yet and one that must be savored, yet some casting and minor editing in the first quarter mark might have enriched the overall experience.

King Ahmad (John Justin) has become a blind man with a dog who is seen peddling in the streets. Prince Jaffar (Conrad Veidt) has blinded Ahmad yet Jaffar needs his help in awakening the princess Jaffar hopes to marry, known simply as the Princess (June Duprez). King Ahmad obliges and tells Jaffar's enslaved women of how he became blind and how the dog was once Abu (Sabu), the prince of thieves belonging to a family of thieves. Their adventures involved everything one loves seeing in a fantasy, including tidal waves; magic carpet rides; the giant flying genie (Rex Ingram) who can only grant three wishes; last-minute rescue attempts including saving someone from a beheading; a goddess with six arms; a Tibetan temple that contains the All-Seeing-Eye in ruby form and a series of booby traps; the shadow cast on the wall of Jaffar acting independently as Jaffar works his evil magic, and much more.

My major quibble is the opening exposition which drags the action a little. I confess that I wanted to see the sense of magic and wonder I recall seeing in my youth, and my anxiety kept wanting the tale to get moving. I do not mind seeing Jaffar and those penetrating eyes, but when he confesses his love for the princess, I got a little bored. It could be that June Duprez is too anemic on screen (Vivien Leigh was originally cast but had to drop out due to a little film called "Gone With the Wind." Imagine how much more striking those scenes would've been with Leigh). The introduction to King Ahmad as played by Justin also strikes me as off-kilter - Justin has little charisma and is about as animated as a cold bowl of soup. Duprez and Justin bring the movie to a slight halt whenever they appear.

"The Thief of Badgad" was originally made in 1924 in a delightful film with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. with Fairbanks playing the thief and a prince as a composite (and the one version I saw had the aptly used "Scheherazade" music by Rimsky-Korsakov). This version was produced by Hungarian producer Alexander Korda and had almost six directors involved, including Michael Powell, Ludwig Berger, William Cameron Menzies and even Korda himself took the reins. Normally this would spell a production in trouble but the results are far better than expected.

But when we get to finally see Sabu on screen as Abu (he is changed into a dog by Jaffar as we see in the opening), the screen becomes electric and tantalizing. I just marvel at Abu's escape from street vendors as he steals cooked fish and jumps up and down rooftops with the greatest of ease, or the way he tricks the genie to get back in his bottle. Sabu brings a sense of joy and enthusiasm to the role - you just know he is ready to burst into action. So with Sabu and the penetrating, angry eyes of Jaffar and the witty Rex Ingram as the laughing genie whose laugh is so powerful that inside a canyon it can break down rock formations, I was hooked and swept away by the grandly entertaining and sheer awesome spectacle of "The Thief of Bagdad."

What hath God wrought?

SPIDER BABY (1968)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

Lon Chaney Jr. might have wondered where his career went when he appeared in occasional disposable junky fare in his latter years. "Dracula vs. Frankenstein" is one disposable stinker that might have stirred up the Biblical line: "What hath God wrought?" Perhaps he thought the same of this Jack Hill-directed horror film (more comical than terrifying overall), "Spider Baby: Or the Maddest Story Ever Told." I do not consider "Spider Baby" a stinker - it is actually a fairly solid little chiller with black humor tones imbued throughout and then some. I don't know what Chaney thought of it but he probably never saw the finished product.

The Merrye Family lives in some decrepit, decaying mansion in the middle of the woods. It is the kind of mansion that one stays away from, not approach and ask if anybody's home. One such victim, a delivery man, falls for the oldest trick in the horror film book - sticking your head into an open window with torn curtains. He is killed instantly, and loses a ear.

The Merrye Family consists of three siblings, two of whom are young women wearing tattered dresses. One is a brunette "spider baby" (Jill Banner) who violently attacks outsiders in a spider-like manner and armed with two handy knives. The other is a blonde nutcase named Elizabeth (Beverly Washburn), who merely stands around and flaunts her sexuality like a feral cat. Then there is Ralph (Sid Haig) who sneers and never says much - he is like a bald raggedy doll craving sexual attention. Bruno (Lon Chaney, Jr.) is the chauffeur and guardian of this bizarre family, which also includes a cannibalistic pair of aunts and uncles living in the cellar. Think of the film "Spider Baby" as an early precursor to 1974's "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and Sam Raimi's "The Evil Dead," not to mention a possible inspiration behind Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses." The rest of "Spider Baby" has family members from out-of-town and their lawyer seeking to take possession of the house. A dinner scene where the meal consists of a cat's carcass (unbeknownst to the guests), insects, mushrooms and a weed salad is enough to make you laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Somehow Lon Chaney, Jr. brings gravity to his role as the guardian - he makes us care about him since all he wants to do is protect the family at any cost from the outside world. It is a spark of humanity added to a cheeky horror flick whose main purpose is to titillate; spiders and much hysteria involving a dumb waiter and fresh meat for consumption add to the titillation. "Spider Baby" is absurdly funny with a haunting finish. For an el cheapo production shot in 12 days with the film producer going bankrupt before finally releasing it four years later, it is much better than expected.