Watch A Thousand and One Nights For Free

Excellent but underrated film

A Masterpiece!

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

Since having recently seen Vincent Price's fun Fantasy Adventure flick Bagdad,I've been in the mood of seeing a similar film.Taking a look at a fellow IMDbers posts,I noticed them praise an Adventure Fantasy title starring Phil Silvers,which led to me getting ready to stay up for 1000 and 1 nights.The plot:Running away with Abdullah after his friend has been caught pick pocketing, Aladdin decides to enter a passing litter that Princess Armina is being taken around the city in.After hearing about Armina's mythical beauty for years,Aladdin finds Armina to be more beautiful than he has ever imagined.Ignoring Abdullah advice,Aladdin decides after successfully escaping,that he will visit Armina later that night in her castle.Getting captured, Aladdin and Abdullah are set to be killed,until Armina uses her charismatic skills to steal the jail key and free Aladdin & Abdullah.Hiding in a cave,the pals run into a sorcerer called Kofir,who gets Aladdin and Abdullah to go deep into the cave,in order to retrieve a lamp.Whilst wondering about why Kofi wants an old,rusting lamp,Aladdin rubs the object,which leads to a gene called Babs coming out of the lamp.Being told that every wish of his will be granted,Aladdin sets his sights on meeting Armina once again.View on the film:Whilst his role in the film is surprisingly not that prominent, Phil Silvers gives a wonderful performance as Abdullah,thanks to Silvers pushing the Fantasy elements aside to scatter Screwball Comedy moments across the screen,and also cleverly using Abdullah's pick pocketing skills for some quick-witted slap-stick Comedy set pieces. Supplying the movie with some likable songs, Cornel Wilde gives a very good performance as Aladdin,with Wilde balancing Aladdin's heart on his sleeve smile,with a charismatic swagger over seeing Princess Armina (played by a cute Adele Jergens) once again.Showing the guys that she can't be pushed around,the elegant Evelyn Keyes gives a great performance as Babs the genie,as Keyes rips apart Aladdin's dizzy love with hilariously sharp one-liners.Covering the title in rich silk,director Alfred E. Green and cinematographer Ray Rennahan glide the film along a warm mystical atmosphere,by crossing the traditional Fantasy elements of genies and princesses with a modern Comedy take.Green joyfully takes the title from swooning song homages to the genie in distress outwitting all of the men.For their take on an Arabian Nights tale,the screenplay by Wilfred H. Petitt/Richard English and Jack Henley attempts to cross Screwball Comedy over with Fantasy Adventure.For the magical Screwball Comedy moments the writers keep the film speeding along via clever 4th wall breaking gags that go from a desperation for the gun to be invented,to a proto-"TV" stone,which are all kept rooted by the sweet-natured friendship between Aladdin & Abdullah.Although the writers display a clear amount of energy in the comedic moments,the title is sadly never able to give the Fantasy Adventure sections the same sense of excitement,due to Aladdin & Princess Armina's dry relationship not being allowed to progress into a blossoming fairy tale.

As if the Maria Montez/Jon Hall/Sabu color fests dealing with similar tales over at Universal weren't camp enough, Columbia gives us this "Hellzapoppin'" type spoof,a jive-talking', slang filled satire that is only missing Robert Hays responding, "Shirley, You Can't Be Serious!". From the moment the bespeckled Phil Silvers comes on screen (glasses weren't invented until 500 years after this takes place!), you know you are in for a wacky ride. His references to Lana Turner and television simply confirm that. Cornel Wilde is Aladdin, the handsome beefy hero who loves the Sultan's daughter (Adele Jergens) after invading her caravan and has won her love as well. But evil is afoot, and after dealing with giant Rex Ingram (repeating his role from "The Thief of Bagdad"), Wilde and Silvers find the lamp an evil sorcerer has sent them looking for, and find it contains the beautiful but wise-cracking Evelyn Keyes. As far removed from "Gone With the Wind's" Tara (where Keyes played Scarlett O'Hara's younger sister) as she could get, Keyes falls in love with Wilde and schemes in her teasing way to prevent him from winning the princess. The story cleverly utilizes aspects of the Arabian Knights tales ("New lamps for old", in particularly) with genuine satire, and is as colorful as the Rita Hayworth musicals that Columbia was turning out. In certain shots, Jergens seems to be photographed and made up exactly as Hayworth was in "Cover Girl".Columbia took a break from its string of Robin Hood adventure yarns for this sword & sandal fest, and came up with a winner. Wilde is a charming hero, Jergens a sweet but spunky princess, and Keyes going down Eve Arden territory with a touch of teenie bopper crush thrown in. Silvers provides some humor that may be considered dated, but some of his gags are timeless. There are enough villains to give Disney's "Aladdin's" Jafar a run for his money, although on closer examination, the plot of the movie resembles "The Lion King". The ending provides one of the funniest gags on screen imaginable.

Bespectacled comedian Phil Silvers and flirtatious genie Evelyn Keyes steal the show in the Alfred E. Green romantic, tongue-in-cheek,Arabian fantasy "A Thousand and One Nights," a gorgeous Technicolored Columbia Pictures release that teems with anachronisms galore. Basically, the Phil Silvers character wears the right clothes but his dialogue bristles with 1940s slang, such as the use of the word groovy. Green, who helmed "The Green Goddess" as well as the Barbara Stanwyck classic "Baby Face," keeps the action breezing along and the atmosphere light-hearted. The leading man, Aladdin of Cathay (youthful, Hungarian-born Cornel Wilde of "High Sierra"), spots a caravan entering the city with an elegant litter and steals within the contraption to feast his eyes upon the lovely daughter of the Kamar Al-Kir, Princess Armina (Adele Jergens of "Armored Car Robbery"), and he falls in love with her. Not surprisingly, she shares his affections. Later, Aladdin and his wise-cracking, pick-pocket thief sidekick, Abdullah (Phil Silvers of "All Through the Night"), are dispatched to find a lantern in a cave by a sorcerer who tries to cheat them out of it. Aladdin discovers that when he rubs the lantern, a genie named Babs (Evelyn Keyes of GONE WITH THE WIND) appears to grant him a wish. The circumstances under which Aladdin makes this discovery is when he refuses to give the sorcerer the lantern after he has trapped them in a cave. Early, our heroes had to elude Meanwhile, the villainous twin brother of the Sultan, Prince Hadji (Denis Hoey of "Uncertain Glory"), persuades the Grand Wazir AbuHassan (Philip Van Zandt of "House of Frankenstein") to join him and remain mum about his masquerade. They imprison the real Sultan in another of his palaces far away.but the evil twin brother overlooks a wound that brother acquired later that he did not know about. When they catch Aladdin flirting with Princess Armina, they imprison him, but Abdullah and he manage to escape through the intervention of the hand-maiden of the princess who slips them the keys to their cell while the guards are playing gin rummy. Aladdin persuades Babs to transform him into a noble man because Arminia is not allowed to marry below her station in life. Mind you, all this time Babs has a terrific crush on Aladdin and does everything that she can to dissuade him from marrying the princess. Eventually, Babs pulls a prank that robs Aladdin of her and he loses everything and is exposed. The fake Sultan orders both of them hanged, but Arminia promises to marry the Grand Wizir in exchange for him turning them loose. This prompts Aladdin to warble a misogynist song in the equivalent of an Arabian saloon while Abdullah contrives his own song where he describes all the women that he loves, including gay women. Clearly, gay in this instance did not refer to lesbians or the repressive Production Code Adminstration would have forced Columbia to remove it from the screenplay. Aladdin gets to swash and buckle in the last half-hour with the fake Sultan as they have a sword fight. For the record, Wilde was a member of the 1936 U.S. Olympic fencing team so he knew how to handle foils. The ending is a slick trick and the writing is above-average, except in one instance where are hero is sent on a wild goose chase to get the lantern after it is thrown out the window.Scenarists Richard English, Jack Henley and Wilfred H. Petitt penned the lively screenplay that stipulates that anybody who uses the genie must retain the lantern if they want to maintain the changes in their respective lifestyle. If you lose the lantern, you loose everything that you received from the genie. Further, only the individual who rubs the lamp can see the genie. The genie, who likes to be called Babs, not only creates an army for the impostor but also makes him a man high enough in status so that he is allowed to see her. Lots of fun, especially Rex Ingram as a giant who menaces the heroes during their initial search for the lantern.

I don't know how to vote on it yet, so I picked the middle. All I was going to say is that it would be nice if they would caption it so we deaf and hearing-impaired people could enjoy too, it because it looks like a fun movie.I am happy with the fact that most of the movies now on TCM have been captioned for our enjoyment. I can read lips somewhat but when the camera is turned away I lose the rest of the sentence. Also, captioning is much easier on the eyes and keeps that break in dialog from happening.I would like to say that before "talkies" I bet more deaf people attended theaters. I still like to go even though I can't tell what is going on most of the time. I would love it if all movie theaters were subtitled for us. They would make even more money than they do now on premiers at the box office for new movies.