Simply A Masterpiece

A Masterpiece!

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

I stumbled across this movie on TMC by accident, and I'm glad I did. Filmed in a time when movies steered towards the dramatic, seeing Paul Henreid in this role was refreshing, and probably something he wanted to do to spice up his versatility as an actor. As soon as I saw Hans Conreid as his sidekick Ben Ali I knew this movie would be great fun, and I stayed for the duration. Very campy but this is the kind of movie to enjoy and not take seriously (despite my jealousy over those beautiful dancing girls). Of all the sand and sandal movies I have seen, this one is definitely my favorite. I highly recommend it to all, but right now I have to catch my crosstown camel!

While many have panned this film, the dancing and theatrics were excellent entertainment. Costuming and sets were well done and while the plot lacked a lot of depth, the mirth and special effects were interesting and ahead of other offerings from the mid 1950's.Casting was done with relative unknowns that worked diligently at coming across as middle eastern while obviously actually being from Mexico or South America...(distinct Spanish dialect in the accents).Dancing and magic was fun and believable. Sit back and enjoy, but don't expect any surprises...

Siren of Bagdad is quite a strange Paul Heinreid film for me. I'm familiar with him from Casablanca (who isn't?) and things like Watch on the Rhine, where he is deadly serious and somewhat ponderous. In Siren, produced by Sam Katzman, who threw together cheap B movies for many years (think East Side Kids), Heinreid is virtually winking at the camera as magician Kazah the Great, trying to rescue his dancing girls after they are kidnapped by... well, no one really cares who, exactly.No one seems to take the plot seriously at all, but do have fun camping in a sandy oasis (I'm sure the beach was just behind the dune), doing vaudeville-type magic tricks, and jumping on barely hidden trampolines when they fight ruffians, then chasing through a lot of sets with gold and primary colors while wearing yards of colorful fabric. There is very much the atmosphere of a Three Stooges short of the late 40s going on here. Hans Conreid plays magician Henireid's manservant Ben Ali who mugs his way through the film. I'm not sure if it's just the print that TCM showed, but the color and print quality are kind of poor for a Columbia film. The grain is noticeably different on the Columbia logo than on the print, and the day-for-night photography is pretty poor, mostly just a blue gel and under exposure for the effect. Interior shots are strangely lit, and very flat considering the scope of the (cheap) sets; I suspect that this is because they were playing things so broad, no one really knew where the actors would actually be during a shot. Kinda fun and very fast moving, which helps cover the silliness of the film.

On January 10, 2008 I watched four Paul Henreid swashbuckler/sand and sandal movies one after the other on Turner Classic Movies. "Thief of Damascus", "Last of the Bucanneers", "Pirates of Tripoli", and "Siren of Bagdad" from 6;00 a.m to 12;00 p.m. Why would anyone do such a crazy thing? I suppose it was some kind of innate desire to journey back to my childhood and down memory lane and catch up on a much forgotten past. The film that stands out of the group, in my opinion, was "Siren of Bagdad". This film really challenges the limits of the concept of "the willing suspension of disbelief". One of the most humorous moments comes when Kazah (Henreid), a magician, turns his friend Ben Ali (Conried) into a beautiful blond belly dancer. The Sultan (Charles Lung) flirts with the sexy vixen beckoning her to speak. Hans Conreid's voice makes an obvious sharp contrast with the belly dancer's beauty. Consequently,the reason for the strange voice is palmed off as the result of someone scaring his/her mother by whistling when she was caring them. Wow! What a stretch. Conried was given some of the best lines in the campy script such as "I would ask you for a match if they had been invented by now", and "When does the next camel to Basra arrive?" Throw in a former Pro Wrestler, Karl "Killer" Davis (Morab)of "Mighty Joe Young" fame, and Sylvia Lewis, one of the sexiest 1950's belly dancers you will ever see...and this turkey makes the necessary transition. In other words...the film is so "bad"... that you walk away thinking it was "good". Does that make any sense to you? If it doesn't .... I don't recommend this film.