The Adventures of Hajji Baba

At least, in France, this adventure film from One Thousand and One Nights tales was very famous, and I understand why after watching it. Full of charm because of the photograpjy, production design, music score and above all Nat King Cole's song. No matter the story, the plot, focus only on the overall film, not details. The best material from director Don Weis, forget the rest. Anyway this director was especially a TV director, more than a big screen film maker. Even if his real influence was not important for this film, it is still a good adventure film and it is very important to consider it in terms of other movies of this kind, as good - but different though - as the Universal ones from the forties and fifties, starring Maria Montez and Jon Hall or Yvonne De Carlo or Maureen O'Hara.

The technical quality of this example of exotica is superb. This is probably the best looking exotica movie produced by Hollywood in the 50s, far more lavish looking than Rock Hudson's The Golden Blade. The attack of the Amazons in the desert is astonishing with the women standing on their racing horses and strangling male soldiers with a garrot.

More fabulous than the tales of the Arabian Nights .. more exciting than the travels of Marco Polo .. more spectacular than the splendors of Kubla Khan ! It deals with a rogue young called Haji . Who's Hajji ¿ Hajii ; John Derek was the most romantic barber and masseur who ever lived , the joy-boy of every harem from Ispahan to Istanbul . Along the way Hajji falls in love for a gorgeous princess : Elaine Stewart and both of them are captured by a tribe of brave Amazon women commanded by a tough leader : Amanda Blake .

Orient adventure movie with thrills , emotion , fights , dazzling spectacle of swordplay, and colorful scenarios . Although the story has been told earlier , tight filmmaking and sympathetic performances win out . Stars John Derek who gives a likable acting as the stalwart hero attempting to save a princess . Derek was an actor and director of considerable success , however, being most known for his marriages to famous stars as Linda Evans , Ursula Andress and Bo Derek . His partenaire is the beauty Elaine Stewart , a young actress who had limited hits . Being accompanied by a good cast such as Thomas Gómez, Paul Picerni, Claude Akins, Laurette Luez , Rosemarie Stack who married actor Robert Stack and Amanda Blake of "Gunsmoke" series .

Here outstanding the brilliant and glimmer cinematography in Universal Studios style by Harold Lipstein, photographed with the revolutionary new anamorphic lens in Cinemascope, Color by De Luxe . And hear Nat King Cole sing the nation's newest son hit "Hajji Baba" , along with the evocative soundtrack by the classic composer Dimitri Tiomkin . The motion picture produced by Walter Wanger in medium budget was professionally directed by Don Weiss. This filmmaker was a fine craftsman usually working for television , shooting episodes of known series as Bareta , Mannix, The Virginian, Batman , Kolchak, Planet of Apes , Wide Country , Twilight Zone Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Checkmate, Aquanauts , The Detectives, The Thin Man, Wagon Train, Burke's Law, Perry Mason, Ironside , Hawaii 5.0 , The Immortal, Rodeo and several others . And occasionally for the big screen as Gene Krupa story , Billie , Pajana Party , Half a Hero, A Slight case of Larceny, The Ghost and the invisible bikini and this Adventures of Hajii Baba . Rating : 6/10 , attractive and decent oriental aventure but no extraordinary .

Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke as the savage leader of a band of scantily clad, horse back riding amazon warriors.

One very mean princess.

A trick horse.

Arab barbers.

Harem girls.

Camels, donkeys and lots of horses.

Desert sands, rugged mountains, oasis.

Colorful wardrobes of many brilliant colors.

All of this set to the wonderful and haunting lyrics of Nat King Cole.

A classic "B" movie from the 50's, this film features numerous women dressed up like a Vargas painting. I don't remember much about the movie other than a slave girl gets tied down to a table and the soles of her feet are lightly cropped, that Haji encounters a band of Amazon-style women warriors, and that Elaine Stewart's character is captured and bound to a frame until Haji comes to her rescue. No nudity, no harsh language, nothing offensive, just the usual damsels in distress. Since the film was made in the fifties, you can bet that those scanty costumes are sewn onto flesh-colored bodysuits. Still, the slave girl cropping is a bit risque for the time and may be worth seeing.