BY FRED BLOSSER
“Son
of Ali Baba,†a 1952 Arabian Nights programmer from Universal-International
Pictures, is available in a Blu-ray edition from Kino Lorber Studio
Classics. The 1080p
MPEG-4 AVC encoded
transfer displays the film’s beautiful Technicolor photography to impressive
effect. In the story, the title
character, Kashma (Tony Curtis), is enrolled as a cadet at the Imperial
Military Academy in medieval Persia. Life at the academy combines the glamor of West Point, Animal House, and
the 1970s Playboy Mansion. After a day
of practicing cavalry maneuvers, the cadets retire to Kashma’s lavish villa to
get drunk and fool around with beautiful girls. The Caliph’s son, Hussein, crashes the party without an invitation, gets
into a fight with Kashma, and winds up in young Baba’s ornamental pool. He doesn’t take the humiliation
lightly. Already on the outs with
Kashma, he swears to get even. Hussein
is played by Hugh O’Brian, who was cast as bad guys as often as good guys in
this early stage of his career, before becoming TV’s Wyatt Earp. In the meantime, the equally malicious Caliph
(Victor Jory) hates Ali Baba (Morris Ankrum) as vehemently as his son despises
Kashma. Envying Ali Baba’s fortune, he
schemes to discredit the venerable hero and seize his wealth for himself. The chance comes when a mysterious young
woman (Piper Laurie) sneaks into Kashma’s villa and identifies herself as Kiki,
a runaway slave girl. When that story
comes into question, she admits that she’s actually a royal, Princess Azura of
Fez. Either way, she claims to be a
fugitive from the Caliph’s harem. Kashma
helps her get away and takes her to Dad’s estate. “There is my father’s palace, and yonder lies
the Valley of the Sun,†he says as they approach their destination, a line
immortalized if widely misquoted as, “Yondah lies the castle of my fadduh, the
king.â€
Unknown
to Kashma, the situation plays into the Caliph’s plans for a hostile takeover
of Ali Baba’s riches. As the Caliph
hatches a scheme that puts Ali and Kashma at odds with the all-powerful Shah of
Persia, the lines of allegiance are drawn. On one side are the bad guys -- the Caliph, Hussein, and their private
army; on the other are the good guys, who wouldn’t be out of place on a modern
teen-oriented TV series like “Stargirl†or “Riverdale†-- Kashma, his best buddy Mustapha (William
Reynolds), and his childhood friend Tala (Susan Cabot), an expert with the bow
and arrow. Thanks to the need to fill
out 75 minutes of running time, it isn’t clear which side Princess Azura is
actually on. Once Tala appears, we’re
led to wonder (although not too strenuously) which beauty will end up in
Kashma’s arms, Azura or Tala.
At
the high tide of the Hollywood studio system in the early 1950s, pictures like
“Son of Ali Baba†were produced by the score with two goals in mind. One purpose was to provide moviegoers with an
evening’s worth of light entertainment unlikely to tax anyone’s intellectual
capacity. Names like Ali Baba, Sinbad,
Monte Cristo, and Robin Hood on the theater marquee promised escape from
worries about bills, mortgages, and the Bomb, at least for 90 minutes or
so. The second goal was to showcase
young actors like Tony Curtis whose fan clubs could be counted on to fill
theater seats. Since Curtis was
essentially hired help at U-I as a contract player, the studio stood to benefit
as much as the actor, if not more so, by courting that segment of the
population. And so at the outset, Gerald
Drayson Adams’ script for “Son of Ali Baba†mostly serves up scenes in which
the exuberant Curtis flirts with, charms, embraces, and kisses various young
actresses in harem costumes. A slide
show of publicity photos could have served the same purpose, at least for the
actor’s most devoted female fans of the high-school persuasion (and maybe, in
closeted Eisenhower-era small towns, not a few male ticket-buyers as
well).
Once
the plot picks up momentum about half an hour in, “Son of Ali Baba†becomes a
pleasant enough Arabian Nights adventure. As Hussein and his gang burn down Ali Baba’s country estate and haul him
off to the Caliph’s dungeon, Kashma evolves from a carefree, privileged playboy
to inspirational avenger. If that
strikes you as a corny conceit that wouldn’t fly with today’s jaded audiences,
you must not have seen any of Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man movies over the past
decade. At this juncture, too, director
Kurt Neumann begins to show some interest in his dramatis personae,
particularly when Tala enters the story. Neumann (1908-58), a German emigre mostly relegated to B-movies in
Hollywood, seemed fascinated by disruptive, unpredictable, and often doomed
characters. Since her heart is in the
right place, Susan Cabot’s steely Tala isn’t quite as unsettling as Neumann’s
crowning example of the type, Mari Blanchard’s ruthless Kyra Zelas in “She
Devil†(1957), but she gives the story a welcome edge anyway when she shows
up. The picture’s most visceral scenes
of violence result from Tala’s archery and not Kashma’s sword fights. Even Kashma’s airheaded groupies Calu (Alice
Kelley) and Theda (Barbara Knudson) -- inseparable from the other eye candy in
the early scenes -- come to life with some amusing business toward the
end. Despondent because all the cadets
have been confined to barracks during Kashma’s uprising against the Caliph,
they’re overjoyed when the troop is released to help the hero. Hurrying over to the academy, they try to
catch the cadets‘ attention as the guys rush past with more pressing business
at hand. “Boys, boys, here we are!†they
call hopefully, like contestants today on “Love Island†and “The Bachelor.†Even kids of the Tik Tok generation are
likely to experience an amused shock of recognition, whatever their interest in
the Arabian Nights or lack thereof.
Special
features on the Kino Lorber Blu-ray include the original theatrical trailer
(“Not even Aladdin’s Lamp could deliver entertainment as spectacular as . . .
‘SON OF ALI BABA’!â€) and perceptive audio commentary by Lee Gambin that points
up, among other observations, the sleek studio production values that
unsympathetic critics usually overlook in unassuming pictures like “Son of Ali
Baba.â€
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