BY HANK REINEKE
Sir Christopher Lee left us in 2015. In doing so he left even his most rabid fans
to spend a good portion of their lives trying to track down all of the films he
appeared in since 1946. This Kino Lorber
Studio Classics Blu-ray release of director Kevin Connor’s Arabian Adventure (1979) will be a welcome one to his many devotees,
especially as it sports a transfer superior to the old Televista DVD issued in
2007. This new transfer is colorful and
bright, with very few issues of scratches or speckling and with just enough
authentic film grain.
Though a near life-long fan of Christopher Lee’s work, I
somehow managed to miss this film when on U.S. release in 1979. I vaguely recall a feature cover story on the
film in a very early issue of Fangoria
magazine but, perhaps since Arabian
Adventure was marketed as a “family film,†my then too-cool nineteen year
old self chose to skip it. Or maybe my
friends weren’t interested in seeing it; or maybe it didn’t play at a theater
near me. I simply don’t recall the
circumstances. Lee historians Robert W. Pohle
and Douglas C. Hart (The Films of
Christopher Lee) suggest that the failure of this Arabian Nights-styled
fable at the U.S. box office was due to it having been released during the
Iranian hostage crisis. Perhaps. Or maybe
it was too whimsical and anachronistic a film to usher out the 1970s, a decade of
often seamy, violent, and envelope-pushing cinematic tropes.
The film was largely photographed at Pinewood Studios,
the fabled home base of the James Bond series. Eagle eyed viewers will catch glimpses of some familiar Pinewood faces,
character actors who have contributed to the 007 franchise in small but
meaningful ways: veterans Shane Rimmer (You Only Live Twice, Diamonds are Forever,
The Spy Who Loved Me) and Milton Reid (of The Spy Who Loved Me and several Amicus Productions). There’s even a youthful appearance of a future
ally of agent 007, Art Malik (billed here under his actual first name Athar), “Kamran
Shah†from The Living Daylights.
Of the aforementioned three, Reid has the most memorable
role as a hulking, intemperate genie tasked in the guarding of the “Sacred Rose
of Elil.†Otherwise, the other aforementioned
actors share roles barely above cameos. Another connection of this film to the Bond series is the bright and
colorful cinematography courtesy of veteran Director of Photography Alan Hume. Hume would go on to be EON’s DOP of the 80s,
handling principal photography on three successive Roger Moore-era adventures (For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy, A View to a
Kill).
The film also boasts two “Special Guest Appearances†featuring
a pair of on-screen personas far more familiar to casual movie-going audiences. The genial Peter Cushing makes two brief
appearances in the film, but is sadly underused here, relegated only to a small
role and one semi-extended scene as Wazir Al Wuzara, the deposed ruler of
Jaddur. More disappointingly to fans of
his work in the Hammer Horror film franchise is that Cushing and his frequent on-screen
nemesis Lee do not share a single scene.
If it’s any consolation to Cushing’s fans, at least the
beloved actor gets a few lines of dialogue. The same cannot be said of the film’s second special guest, Mickey
Rooney. The diminutive, aged Rooney has
an unusual and wordless role as the Steam-Punk marionette master to a trio of
fearsome, fire-breathing, gilded gold steel-plated gargantuan dragons. It’s an amusing scene, but his presence here
amounts – again – to little more than a cameo.