OldFilmLover

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves is the best of the Montez-Hall movies, ahead of Arabian Nights, which perhaps deserves an 8, Cobra Woman, which deserves a 7, and White Savage, which deserves only slightly over a 6. My 9 rating is perhaps a bit high -- maybe 8.4-8.6 would be more accurate -- but I give it a 9 in protest against the ridiculously low IMDb average.

What sets this above all the others is the script; both plot and dialogue are superior. The performances are also livelier, the acting better (both of the leads, Hall and Montez, and of the supporting cast), and the feeling of forward movement in the story much greater.

In fact, I rank this film third, all-time, among classic adventure films in which only normal human beings with normal human powers are involved (no genies, dragons, gods, animated skeletons, Jedi knights, etc.), and which are not at least part tongue-in-cheek (like the Indiana Jones films). Only The Adventures of Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro are better in this category. (Though The Black Swan, The Most Dangerous Game and a few others come close.)

Kurt Katch turns in a great performance as the evil Hulagu Khan. To the 7-to-13-year-olds who crowded the Saturday matinée in 1944, Katch's Khan would be the classic portrayal of the tyrant. Of course, to adult eyes, Katch's performance is over-acted, but films in this genre have to be judged with their intended audience in mind.

Special mention should go to Turhan Bey, and to Frank Puglia as Montez's sycophantic father. The only performance which could be thought a flaw in the film is that of Andy Devine, as the fat "comedy relief" thief. The "cowboy humour" he brings from his other roles seems a bit out of place in a basically high-toned, medieval-flavoured tale about the Muslim and Mongol Middle East. I could have done without him. Still, he was doing what the part called for, so really any blame should be assigned to the writer and director rather than Devine himself. And again, we have to consider the primary audience for the film (though adults can enjoy it, too) was the kids -- and that sort of comedy relief would be what many 40s kids liked.

The music, camera work, and Technicolor are all first-rate. The film is polished. When 1940s Universal did one of its rare, big-budget "A"-list movies, it could do it very well.

Love, courage, nobility; a despicable Oriental tyrant and a people groaning under his heel; the transformation of thieves into patriots; action, glamour, spectacle, and a rousing climax -- this film is a perfect piece of sheer entertainment.

I watched this movie with my kids over and over again when they were young. They loved it. It's a great family movie if you have pre-teen kids who have not yet been jaded by the modern emphasis on loudness and special effects, and can still accept the older styles of acting and storytelling because they have the openness of childhood. If you start them out on Indiana Jones and Star Wars, it may be impossible for them to go back later and really enjoy these older-style adventure movies. Give them this experience while they can still enjoy it.

I'm stunned by the low average (5.4) given to Circus of Fear by IMDb voters. I've just watched the 91-minute colour version put out on DVD by Blue Underground, and found it absorbing throughout.

My guess is that many of the reviewers have seen only the truncated 1965 American version (65 minutes); naturally, missing 26 minutes of a 91- minute film, one will see only a very imperfect version of what the filmmakers intended. To get a true sense of the film one has to have the uncut version.

Despite the advertisements of the time, which played up the film as a horror movie (cashing in on the fact that horror icon Christopher Lee was the star of the film), this is not a horror film. There are some frightening moments, but this is essentially a whodunit, and a fairly good one. The slight "horror" tinge to the film (with its hooded lion- tamer, murders by skillfully thrown knives, screaming circus starlets, vicious circus lions, etc.) add atmosphere, but the story remains a whodunit.

It's also a caper film, insofar as it opens with a well-filmed money truck heist in broad daylight on the Tower Bridge in London. (It was filmed on location for that part.) But there ends up being some kind of sinister and unclear connection between the heist and goings-on at a circus, and it takes the whole film to make clear exactly what the connection is.

Leo Genn is brilliant as the Scotland Yard detective. He has a smooth, beautiful, calm acting manner reminiscent of Herbert Marshall's, and is a joy to watch. The excellent dialogue he is given doesn't hurt. The movie also has good performances by a number of very good British and German actors of the 1960s (it was a German-English co-production).

Christopher Lee is good in the part of the hooded lion-tamer with an ambiguous past. He shows his ability to act in non-horror parts here.

The opening and closing theme music is good, with a 1960s British flavor, but the film itself has only incidental music, with many parts of the story unaccompanied. This works well for this type of film.

The colour photography is beautiful.

This movie is definitely worth more than a 7 out of 10. Maybe it's not quite worth an 8, but to compensate for the ridiculous 5.4 average, I give it an 8 anyway. That's less misleading than a 5.4. A 5.4 says, "Don't waste your time watching this movie", but this movie is very much worth watching, for Genn's performance alone, not to mention its other merits.

After a long wait, I finally got hold of a copy of Charlie McCarthy, Detective (1939), a Universal mystery/comedy directed by Frank Tuttle (known for Philo Vance and other crime-oriented films).

First of all, the running time currently listed on IMDb for this film (as of May 8, 2017) is incorrect. It says 65 minutes, and one of the reviewers here concurs, saying the film runs barely over an hour. But the reviewer, and whoever supplied the 65-minute time, must have seen a shortened edition. My version runs at 74:39. If you have seen only a 65-minute edition, you've missed some of the plot. (Note: I have submitted a request to correct this running time.)

This is a delightful film. It's a murder mystery, of course, with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy taking a break from their nightclub act to work on the case. But before that, we get to see some of the nightclub act, and it's some of the best Bergen/McCarthy stuff on film, even including a "title song" with Charlie dressed up Sherlock Holmes, announcing his brilliance as a detective. Working with Edgar and Charlie in the act is Constance Moore, whose character sings two pretty romantic songs, apparently written especially for the film. There is also plenty of witty repartee between Bergen and McCarthy throughout the film, and several bits of comedy relief by Mortimer Snerd, who is also better than normal in this film.

This film is a treat for fans of old films who love to see their favourite character actors pop up in odd places. Here we see, in major and minor roles, Louis Calhern, Samuel Hinds, Harold Huber (as a comic-bookish gangster), Warren Hymer, Edgar Kennedy, Grace Hayle, Charles Lane (as a doctor!), Milburn Stone, and (for only a quick look) the pretty Universal contract player Anne Gwynne (as one of Lane's nurses). And oh, don't forget, Bob Cummings has a major role in the film, and second-string romantic lead John Sutton (as the love of Constance Moore's life) has a substantial role as well.

As a mystery, the story is only so-so, but that's hardly the point in this film. The point is to combine the genre of murder mystery with Bergen/McCarthy/Snerd clowning, and it's done very well.

I don't go out of my way to catch Bergen/McCarthy films, but this one is worth seeing at least once. It deserves at least a 7 out of 10, and maybe more. My rating of 8 is a bit too high, perhaps, but the 6.4 current average is way too low. It's not a superb comedy, but it's a breezy, entertaining one. If you can get a good copy at the full running time, and if you have no objection in principle to Bergen and McCarthy, and if you love 30s/40s film casts, you won't be disappointed with this one.