La nuit du sérail

As Tulip dies, notice how carefully he handles the vase in his hands. This is, undoubtedly, due to the fact that the props were returned to Pier 1 the day after the shooting finished.

Intimate Power has yet to meet its full destiny on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Fascinating story but except for F.Murray Abraham this movie had some of the worst acting I have ever seen. I have seen children in school plays put on more believable performances than Amber O'Shea and James Michael Gregary. With the lacking script and C movie performance (I thought at first it might be a porno film) it took me 3 days to watch. I was so intrigued with the story line I wanted to see the ending but again because of the scrip and acting I could only watch it in small doses. I'm hoping someone will take this wonderful tale and make a real "movie" about it. Probably watchable if you have allot of paperwork or crafts or something to take your mind off the performers and their flat delivery of poor lines.

What I saw was a throwback to cliché-cluster flicks of decades ago, but the soundtrack puts it firmly in the eighties.

It is thumpingly and enormously awful, as wretched and phony a film as could be conceived. Tittering harem ladies a'bathing, stern Turks delivering script bits from the 100 Most Popular Stock Lines for the genre. They might as well have gone beyond the scattered skin peeks to a fuller soft-core intention -- all pillow-plush and pleasures in the sultan's palace, because that's already the quality/ambiance/performance level of much of this thin 'n cheesy production.

The producers may have scored the perfectly suited shooting location, but much else in the movie seems to be reaching for the furthest reaches of inauthenticity.

Admissions: There is amusement, even delight, in encountering something so consummately lame, in wondering who could work on it and think for a moment this embarrassment should be taken seriously. I really did laugh out loud a few times at this painfully acted, double-dreadfully written, obliviously directed caricature. Maybe I WOULD view a portion of it again, preferably with someone else. "Look!...watch this! Watch!"

And..I only made it through the early half. Turned away easily without even the tiniest rhinestone of regret. (A bug buzzing by in the living room could be diversion enough from this bungle.) Could be...could be that when it moved deeper into violence and intrigue, into dramatic seizures(!) of fate and steering of history, it took a turn toward something more engaging and more plausibly presented. Could happen...right?

I have to disagree with the former review. While it has been a long time since I have seen this particular movie. I can think of far worse ways to spend an hour and 45 minutes!

It is however, a movie that has a hard time fitting into a category. As an historical movie, it is highly fictionalized (although it is based on a real person who did in fact bring Christianity to the royal family of, I believe, Turkey.) It has too much gore to really be a romance.

As for the acting, I really liked F. Murray Abraham's performance. Amber O'Shea could be seen as rather Lackluster, but I generally prefer an understated performance. Ron Dortch, as Tulip, was really good.

One final word of warning. While I saw nothing in this movie that was not included to further the storyline, I did recommend this to a friend who was highly offended by the sexual nature of a few scenes. But hey, the movie was about a young European girl who finds herself married to a Turkish Aga, and conceives his heir. What can you expect!

Although I can see where the dissers are coming from, I found this film charming. Yeah, the script and acting could have been better, but man, what a story! Aimee Dubucq de Rivery, cousin of the French Empress Josephine, captured by pirates and sold into the Turkish ruler's harem, in later life ends up transforming Turkey into the modern age through her son. She was known as the Sultan Valideh, the Veiled Power, and she made herself and her son a bridge to the West.

She must have been something and a half, and Amber O'Shea, with a pretty crappy script, somehow manages to sell it. And of course any harem run by F. Murray Abraham is my kind of harem.

All in all, a pleasant couple of hours. I await the REAL movie of Naksh, the Sultan Valideh.