As Aventuras de Hajji Baba

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.

Anyone who has been married to both Ursula Andress and Bo Derek, must have something… Now in a white or orange turban and playing a brave young barber called Hajji Baba, in Isphahan, Persia, John Derek is still attractive to women and especially to Princess Fawzia (Elaine Stewart).

In the Fifties, Derek was the dashingly good-looking young hero of adventure films, rated by his teenage female fans as a 10 on the scale of male beauty…

In "The Adventures of Hajji Baba," Derek helps an insolent princess – disguised as a boy – on her way to marry a distant powerful prince (Paul Picerni) against the wishes of her father… Once they arrive to meet him, in the desert, they soon discover he is a rogue, whose plans for marriage are purely for one ambitious purpose… Hajji Baba then rebels against the prince, rescuing and winning the heart of the beautiful princess by believing in himself…

The glamorous Elaine Stewart looked cool, lush and marvelous as the spoiled selfish cruel princess who walks through the entire motion picture expressing her bad temper, and silencing everyone by threat…

By the early Seventies and despite public interest in her, Stewart's career did not fulfill its potential… Her phase was over, but she had certainly proved that she could be a star and, 35 years later, fans of Fifties' movies are still enamored of her

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.

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.

Priceless junk that is pretty much explained by its title. John Derek was a good looking man and at times an adequate actor but not here although the script such as it is doesn't really lend itself to major thesping. Elaine Stewart as the princess is even worse enacting her role with all the passion of a petulant schoolgirl and showing that her eventual participation in numerous game show as a hostess was probably the best use of her talents. The only cast member to emerge with any kind of distinction is Thomas Gomez who chews the high grade ham as an good hearted but opportunistic trader. The costumes are just about what you would expect from this sort of sword and sandal flick but keep an eye out at about the hour mark for a young slave maiden wearing what truly appears to be a mop on her head!! The most baffling aspect of the whole thing is that it has a score conducted by Nelson Riddle and an (awful) theme song sung by the great Nat King Cole that is repeated over and over again throughout the flick. Enjoyable once in a mindless colorful way.