{"id":26456,"date":"2017-09-29T08:05:02","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T12:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=26456"},"modified":"2017-12-09T18:57:33","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T23:57:33","slug":"the-bootleg-files-babes-in-bagdad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2017\/09\/29\/the-bootleg-files-babes-in-bagdad\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bootleg Files: Babes in Bagdad"},"content":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 607:<\/strong> \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d (1951 romp directed by Edgar G. Ulmer).<\/p>\n

LAST SEEN:<\/strong> It can be found on YouTube.<\/p>\n

AMERICAN HOME VIDEO:<\/strong> None.<\/p>\n

REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS:<\/strong> It is not entirely clear why.<\/p>\n

CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE:<\/strong> Lord, I hope not!<\/p>\n

One does not approach a film titled \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d expecting a provocative cerebral challenge. But, at the same time, one should not expect an unfocused mess of half-baked feminist politics and burlesque antics molded together by several great talents who hit respective career lows with this nonsense.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d takes place in the typical B-movie fantasy concept of an Arabian kingdom, with an emphasis on flashy arabesque production design rather than a genuine Islamic cultural protocol. The film is centered on the harem of Hassan, the Kadi of Bagdad, who has 12 wives \u2013 and these women look and behave like Minsky showgirls in their dressing rooms. Hassan\u2019s favorite wife is the shrewd Zohara, and she is recruited to tame the wild-natured Kyra, who has been brought to Hassan by slave traders. But Zohara and Kyra team up with the other wives to write a letter to the Caliph, the Kadi\u2019s superior, demanding gender equality and the end of polygamous relations.<\/p>\n

The Caliph is an old-fashioned conservative who is not happy with this challenge to the social structure and insists that Zohara be executed. But Ezar, his handsome godson, approves of what the ladies are preaching and announces that he would prefer having only one wife.<\/p>\n

From here, the 79-minute film seems to go in 20 different directions with subplots and sub-subplots involving hidden identities, mistaken identities, dishonest tax collectors, the Kadi being drugged and dumped outside of his palace dressed in rags, anvil statements on women\u2019s rights and a couple of dance numbers that look as if they were improvised rather than choreographed. This is not a film that you watch while munching on popcorn \u2013 instead, a couple of aspirin and an antacid tablet would help make it palatable.<\/p>\n

Of course, Arabian fantasies from Hollywood\u2019s Golden Era are mostly harmless and entertaining \u2013 from the artistry of \u201cThe Thief of Bagdad\u201d to the Technicolor distractions of Maria Montez\u2019s career, this genre was meant to be benign yet fun-loving. But \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d is such a complex jumble that it is impossible to imagine whether its creators were winking at the audience or choking on their own pretentions. To understand what went wrong, it is important to recognize who was responsible for this problem.<\/p>\n

The film was fueled by Edward J. Danzinger and Harry Lee Danzinger, a pair of New York brothers who independently produced low-budget features. The Danzingers hired the excessively prolific director Edgar G. Ulmer to helm their 1951 comedy \u201cSt. Benny the Dip\u201d \u2013 which was an odd choice, considering that Ulmer specialized in thrillers and noir, and comedy was never his forte. But the film turned out to be an acceptable effort, and the Danzingers opted to bring Ulmer back for \u201cBabes in Bagdad.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the Danzingers relocated their productions to Europe, and \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d was shot in Spain, where studio costs were far less expensive than in Hollywood. The Spanish location also enabled the Danzingers to simultaneously shoot a second version of \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d with a Spanish-speaking supporting cast \u2013 including singer Carmen Sevilla in a role that was absent from the English-language film \u2013 that could be released across Spain and Latin America. The Spanish-language version, however, ran 17 minutes longer than the English-language version, which makes it a completely different experience.<\/p>\n

But the Danzingers faced a dilemma in casting their film: in order to ensure box office returns, they needed stars with name recognition. But they also had to find actors that would agree to appear in such a ridiculous fantasy. As the free-spirited slave girl Kyra and her savvy comrade Zohara, they brought in 47-year-old faded Hollywood leading lady Paulette Goddard and the 41-year-old Broadway striptease star Gypsy Rose Lee. Despite generous amounts of make-up and creative costuming, both women looked as if they were the mothers of the harem girls rather than the seductive young maids. Goddard seemed to be furiously rehashing her gamin character from Chaplin\u2019s \u201cModern Times\u201d while Lee didn\u2019t even bother to phone in a performance \u2013 though, oddly, their mix of hamming and somnambulism offered a decent balance.<\/p>\n

Not helping matters much was 1930s musical star John Boles as the Kadi \u2013 the man looked pained throughout the film, as if ruing this casting choice, and he retired from acting after completing the role. Rotund Sebastian Cabot turns up briefly to skirt Production Code censorship as the harem\u2019s bitchy eunuch \u2013 a bit of coded language hints at his condition \u2013 while a young Christopher Lee has a wordless minor role as one of the slave traders.<\/p>\n

For no very clear reason, \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d was never released in the U.S. in any official home video format. Indeed, the film has not been properly presented since its 1952 theatrical release, which was screened in Cinefotocolor, a Spanish color process called Exotic Color in the U.S. market. The film turned up on television in the late 1950s and later in collector-to-collector exchanges as a murky black-and-white print. A crummy dupe of this inferior print of the film can be found on YouTube<\/a>. However, color stills from the Cinefotocolor version can be found online, but it appears that the color cinematography called harsh attention to the poverty of the film\u2019s production. Thus, it seems \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d doesn\u2019t work in either color or black-and-white \u2013 maybe this would have worked best if someone left the lens cap on the camera!<\/p>\n

IMPORTANT NOTICE: While this weekly column acknowledges the presence of rare film and television productions through the so-called collector-to-collector market, this should not be seen as encouraging or condoning the unauthorized duplication and distribution of copyright-protected material, either through DVDs or Blu-ray discs or through postings on Internet video sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Listen to \u201cThe Online Movie Show with Phil Hall<\/a>\u201d on SoundCloud, with new episodes every Monday.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOTLEG FILES 607: \u201cBabes in Bagdad\u201d (1951 romp directed by Edgar G. Ulmer). LAST SEEN: It can be found on YouTube. AMERICAN HOME VIDEO: None. REASON FOR BOOTLEG STATUS: It is not entirely clear why. CHANCES OF SEEING A COMMERCIAL DVD RELEASE: Lord, I hope not! One does not approach a film titled \u201cBabes in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":26457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1513],"tags":[1800,1245,1801,1803,1804,1802],"class_list":["post-26456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bootleg-files","tag-babes-in-bagdad","tag-christopher-lee","tag-edgar-g-ulmer","tag-gypsy-rose-lee","tag-john-boles","tag-paulette-goddard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26456"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27122,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26456\/revisions\/27122"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}