Howard Hughes is the man.
This will probably be considered too cheesy to watch by most.
The acting is horrible and the production values? Well, lets just say they used coarse brushes on the painted backdrops. This could be Vincent Price's most ridiculous role and that's saying a lot. He plays Omar Khayyám, possibly the brightest man who lived in historical times. Here he is a slackmouthed sidekick who writes alluring phrases for the stupid Lothario to clumsily recite. The women swoon nonetheless.
But this has two things that matter. One is that the story actually makes sense, more sense than any modern adventure. But you won't notice this, because the movie is about sex. Hughes doesn't mess around because he knows his stuff.
There are two harem dance sequences. The first occupies the first five minutes of the movie. Nothing happens until we end this dance, something that has nothing whatever to do with the story. The Arabs are played by scowling extras, but the roles that mattered are played by pros. The two dancers are the top stripper in Turkey, and the top stripper in Los Angeles. Scattered about are dozens of harem women
And it has some gags that are better than anything in Indiana Jones. For instance Sinbad and Omar stop in the middle of the huge desert and Sinbad starts digging. Why? Because he guesses that the bad guy will erect his harem's tent over the spot. Sure enough...
The 40 thieves in this version are the sexy Amazonian daughters of the originals, led by the love interest, the nearly nude redhead dancer Sally Forrest. She claimed to have auditioned privately for Hughes. Her dance here is the whole story.
This was incidentally when Howard became the goto guy for CIA gadgets. The special effects here revolve around "Greek fire," a legendary explosive. Here the "formula" is hidden in a beauty's mind, to be recovered by trance induced by a moving faceted prism. Hughes Aircraft would soon make the key breakthrough in modern thermobaric explosives.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.
This will probably be considered too cheesy to watch by most.
The acting is horrible and the production values? Well, lets just say they used coarse brushes on the painted backdrops. This could be Vincent Price's most ridiculous role and that's saying a lot. He plays Omar Khayyám, possibly the brightest man who lived in historical times. Here he is a slackmouthed sidekick who writes alluring phrases for the stupid Lothario to clumsily recite. The women swoon nonetheless.
But this has two things that matter. One is that the story actually makes sense, more sense than any modern adventure. But you won't notice this, because the movie is about sex. Hughes doesn't mess around because he knows his stuff.
There are two harem dance sequences. The first occupies the first five minutes of the movie. Nothing happens until we end this dance, something that has nothing whatever to do with the story. The Arabs are played by scowling extras, but the roles that mattered are played by pros. The two dancers are the top stripper in Turkey, and the top stripper in Los Angeles. Scattered about are dozens of harem women
And it has some gags that are better than anything in Indiana Jones. For instance Sinbad and Omar stop in the middle of the huge desert and Sinbad starts digging. Why? Because he guesses that the bad guy will erect his harem's tent over the spot. Sure enough...
The 40 thieves in this version are the sexy Amazonian daughters of the originals, led by the love interest, the nearly nude redhead dancer Sally Forrest. She claimed to have auditioned privately for Hughes. Her dance here is the whole story.
This was incidentally when Howard became the goto guy for CIA gadgets. The special effects here revolve around "Greek fire," a legendary explosive. Here the "formula" is hidden in a beauty's mind, to be recovered by trance induced by a moving faceted prism. Hughes Aircraft would soon make the key breakthrough in modern thermobaric explosives.
Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.