La esclava del paraíso

This obscure 60's bit of Arabian nights hokum features Jeff Cooper as Omar, a young prince who returns to the Muslim kingdom of Granada, to find the land under the thumb of villainous Hixem (Raf Vallone) a sneering, vulture-eyed tyrant (aren't they all?) While trying to raise forces to restore the throne to its rightful ruler, Omar coincidentally happens upon a bottle bearing Mizziana (Luciana Paluzzi from THUNDERBALL), a gorgeous and buxom genie of the Barbara Eden mold. Together with his comic servant Ali (Rueben Rojo), Omar and Mizzianna work to overthrow Hixem, while getting entangled in a love triangle involving Hixem's favorite concubine (Perla Cristal).

Like so many of the cornball sword & sandal movies from the same decade, this involves your archetypal beefy hero in period outfits out trying to free the palace in dubbed dialog. Surprisingly, it's a well written piece, with lots of tongue-in-cheek humor and actually a few moving moments, such as when Hixem frees one of his slaves, unexpectedly revealing his more compassionate side. And I wonder, being a Spanish-Italian co production, if there was any anti-Franco references in Omar's attempts to "restore freedom for Granada" against the tyrant. If so, it gives otherwise standard adventure fare a bit of edge.

Of course, being an Arabian nights bit of hokum, it has to have Paluzzi in skimpy genie outfits, plus other gorgeous bikini models posing as harem girls. Plus, there's a nice erotic bit of belly dancing that clearly made an impact on my own impressionable adolescent mind when I first saw it. It never ceases to amaze me how much visible sexual content could make its way into Arabian Nights fodder. Some undulating, dark-eyed vixen with a jewel in her navel always gave these movies a sensual air of oriental eroticism, all the more daring in that they were usually granted G-ratings for the kid matinées, as in the case of THE GOLDEN VOYAGE OF SINBAD or SINBAD AND THE EYE OF THE TIGER. Not that I'm complaining.

While packaged as an "Arabian Nights" kind of movie, this isn't set in Arabia but rather in Moorish Spain around the cities of Seville and Granada. Nor does it have much to do, in a literary sense, with the classic "Arabian Nights" tales. However, those looking for an agreeable "Saturday matinee" sort of movie will find a number of small pleasures contained herein.

The plot is that venerable one about the returning son who finds his father murdered and his place usurped by a powerful villain. As usual, the hero has a sidekick who provides some comic relief and, not surprisingly, there's a pretty girl who injects the necessary dose of romance.

Raf Vallone would seem to be a good choice as the villain but he isn't given much to do and his scenes lack the required flair. Similarly, Ruben Rojo makes such a half-hearted sidekick that his part could have been eliminated without regret. On the other hand, Luciana Paluzzi is a visual delight as the genie who springs out of a bottle and into the hero's arms, and Jeff Cooper is suitably stalwart as this hero. Along with such notables as Kirk Douglas and Cary Grant, Cooper has a distinctive chin-dimple which adds interest to his almost-handsome face.

As is often the case in these affairs, the hero winds up captured and put into bondage, but the results are a bit disappointing. Admittedly, Jeff Cooper looks good with his shirt off but he's bound to an X-shaped cross in an unsatisfactory way. For one thing, the shape of the X is too narrow to allow for a properly spreadeagled position, and for another, Cooper isn't really stretched on it but instead simply stands in front of it with token chains on his wrists and ankles. However, he suffers appropriately under a chest-tearing lash and there's a nice bit when Raf Vallone threatens him with a hot iron aimed at his much-too-talkative mouth.

This rambunctious, light-hearted Arabian Nights adventure is a definite throwback to the genre prominent in 40's and early 50's Hollywood. And it is thoroughly entertaining, thanks to Jeff Cooper. He's just the right mix for the hero, looking fierce and macho when serious and engaged in action sequences. But when he sets out to charm a lady and breaks into a radiant smile with wide eyes, his face lights up and he suddenly looks like an innocent teen heart-throb. Lucianna Paluzzi is fetching as the lovely genie who falls in love with her master (Cooper)and helps him in his trials while jealous of his amorous exploits. This belongs in the league with the Sinbad films with it's humor and fantasy elements. Though not as spectacular, the lively and well written characters as well as its ambiance more than make up for dazzling special effects.

When you're stationed in the military in a rather forlorn place, and you don't care to get drunk every night, and night school classes don't yet hold an appeal, the movie theater is pretty much the only other alternative for escape.

In 1968 and into 69, I watched numerous fair to really bad movies at the base theater about 2 blocks from our barracks. This, The Green Slime, Sweet November, etc. If you've seen them, you know how desperate some of us were.

But Luciana Paluzzi did brighten the screen in several of them. She had a run of, what?, six or seven movies during this time? Outside of her slightly more skimpy than Barbara Eden's I Dream of Jeannie outfit, what was memorable were some of her lines. When introduced, explaining that she couldn't do all the things a regular genie could do, she remarked that she was only a 'second-class' genie, having been demoted for insubordination. That probably got the biggest laugh out of the 100% military audience.

Other than that, this was a very unremarkable costume drama in the Arabian Nights motif, though in a rather heavily vegetation-ed landscape, so no sand dune escapades.

A mostly forgettable movie, slightly better than the others, but not quite 'bad' enough to be ranked with an Ed Wood production.