The Magic Carpet (1951)

Too much of everything

Simply Perfect

Fantastic!

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

Two decades before her debacle of the movie version of the Broadway musical "Mame", Lucille Ball had a truly wretched film which she herself had badmouthed. It was all to get out of that Columbia contract, hopefully to appear in the big Cecil B. Demille smash, "The Greatest Show on Earth", but of course, that didn't happen. Instead, she ended up on TV and the rest was immortality.Lucy's a princess here, beyond miscast as an obviously non-Arab Arab princess. This is miscasting at it's worst, with Lucy acting like she's ready to have a cat fight with the first actual Arab to come along and reclaim the title she seems to have stolen from them. She's the sister of the caliph, the subject of affections by the caliph's right hand man (Raymond Burr) who is twice as evil as the usurper caliph, having nefarious intentions himself. Years before, the rightful caliph was murdered, and his heir is sent off on a magic carpet, growing up to be John Agar, a common thief. Hired as the caliph's doctor simply because he cured his hiccups, he soon finds out his real identity and becomes involved with both Lucy and Patricia Medina, a peasant girl who is no Maria Montez or Yvonne De Carlo. Corny to the end, this is a quota quickie (produced by poverty row producer Sam Katzman) that was perfect for Saturday matinée audiences but forgotten soon after. Burr is appropriately sinister, with Lucy obviously phoning in a performance. George Tobias provides comedy relief while the actual carpet is pretty impressive allegedly flying through the air with the greatest of ease.

To judge anything out of Hollywood on a par with some of the incredible live performances of today's megastars is "apples n' oranges." That's why everyone still refers to it as "The Factory." Particularly now with most everything is loaded with computerized graphics - to satisfy my preteen grandchildren's Xbox fantasyworld. Back when Hollywood could crank out these pieces of trash allowing us to roll around on the living room floor laughing until we ache all over even now is the epitome of why "The Factory" churned out this stuff. Seeing very gay Raymond "Ironside" Burr sashay around in my grannies old drapes (AND THAT HILARIOUS TURBAN) is right up there with the old Mummy, Dracula, Werewolf and Frankenstein films. My dinner guests absolutely chortle with glee when I pull out one of these chestnuts, and then there's all those perfectly tacky buccaneer movies with John Payne, Steve Reeves and Maureen O'Hara.

MGM's slogan was "More stars than there are in heaven." Columbia's might have been "More crap than there is in a chicken coop". Columbia produced some fine films, but its percentage of gobblers is notably higher than that of 20th, MGM, Paramount, Warner, etc. This is one of the turkeys.The story is the usual Arabian nights hokum. The dialog (some of which sounds as if it was lifted from Westerns) is written so as not to confuse a five-year-old, leading to terminal boredom for adults. The film is so uninvolving that the composer fills virtually every second with music, to make the viewer think something of interest is happening. The fight scenes, in particular, are notable non-events. (They look as if the actors choreographed them on the fly.)The acting is strictly amateur, with only Raymond Burr working up enough energy to sound convincing -- and that only occasionally. John Agar's performance is among his worst -- perhaps //the// worst. One gets an inkling of why his marriage to The Queen of Cute ended.The sets and costumes are lavishly cheap, and the color is the weirdly hued Super Cinecolor, a couple of notches inferior to the more-expensive Technicolor. The only things that show any taste or talent are several beautiful glass paintings.This is the sort of film that ought to have been skewered on MST3K, but wasn't. A shame, really.

Okay, this movie is a cheap Saturday matinée type film from the 1950's, but heck, that is all it is meant to be. It is one of those silly Arabian nights movies that is fun to watch. I wish it were released on DVD, as I would gladly buy it. As a child, I liked this movie when I saw in on television, and just recently saw it again and still like it. Runs in the family as those 1950 Universal Studio Tony Curtis "Son Of Ali Baba" type films and "Son Of Sinbad" with Vincent Price. These movies may not be great in any sense of the word, but they sure are fun to watch one right after the other when there is nothing else to do!! And besides, like my summary said, where else can you find a film that has Lucy Ricardo, Perry Mason and Abner Kravitz in it??