Brandon's Cult Movie Reviews: THE THIEF OF BAGDAD
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- Опубликовано: 1 фев 2024
- Time to tackle an Oscar-winning, critically acclaimed classic with the 1940 fantasy movie "The Thief Of Bagdad"!
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Remember kids: if a genie grants you 3 wishes, don't waste the first one on sausages!
Wish for more wishes.
Thanks... I'll take that advice under advisement.
The genie made a mistake. Due to spending half the movie as a dog, Abu actually wished for Snausages.
Brandon, since you're reviewing white-washed movies based on Arabian myths, could you do a review of the 2010 Prince of Persia?
Yeah, screw that. Im wishing for the ability to conjure sausages myself without needing more wishes.
The thief of Baghdad was actually mentioned as a leading influence in the making of Disney's Aladdin.
Exactly. Aladdin never had 3 wishes and he had two genies with unlimited wishes from both genies
"Going full Trudeau..." I LOVE IT!
More of a half Trudeau. Theirs are more of a brown face.
At least his gaffs are old, and not intentional like Polly’s today.
Fun fact! Abu finding the bottled Genie is based on a tale from the Thousand and One Nights. It's simply a fisherman finding the bottle, releasing the djinn and then tricking it back into the bottle, and then tossing the bottle back into the sea pretty much saying, "Welp, this is someone else's problem now."
Эту бутылку потом найдёт брат этого джина Гассан Абдурахман ибн Хоттаб в книге "Старик Хоттабыч".
@@user-nm1gj4qn6wyeah Genie can be Evil and Good as in Islamic Folklore, Genie are one of the few beings who can be good and evil.
@@forickgrimaldus8301aren't they the neutral angels who didn't join shaitan, but didn't fight for Allah or something like that? They're also describe as elemental spirits, like the embodiment of fire or water, and the elements are necessary for life but can also kill you.
@@AliceBowie depends
Love that tale!
"It's part of the My Little Pony Godfather Collection."
I was eating, dude. I damn near choked because of that. 🤣🤣🤣
Oh I know that pain!
At least you weren't drinking and watching this on a new and expensive computer! There's always that!
"Jaffar" being named with two f's instead of one makes them totally different.
That's called the Vanilla Ice philosophy.
Brandon: "Now, this next part is a little bit strange."
Me: "Oh, like in comparison to the rest of this movie?"
To be fair to the Sultan, I’d probably want the guy who can make flying horses as my son-in-law too.
People might ask why didn’t they finish the movie in London “A little dust-up called World War fucking 2” that’s funny as hell
I'm guessing the Londoners of the time might've struggled to see the funny side...
"Going full Trudeau." 🤣
I grew up a huge portion of my life thinking that this was a Sinbad movie.
It may as well have been....Similar original sources .... though, to be fair, Thief of Bagdad cornered the Middle Eastern fantasy adventure angle in cinemas long before Sinbad showed up - There was a famous 1924 silent version with Douglas Fairbanks Jr that came before this and gave it many of it's ideas and set pieces....Both movies ended up influencing the Ray Harryhausen - Charles H Scheer films that are now the 'gold standard' in the genre......
@@sergiocampanale3882 -- That's Douglas Fairbanks SR.-- the same guy who first played ZORRO.
@@henrykujawa4427 I stand corrected ... a moment of distraction, naturally.
to be fair, thief of bagdad is what disney took a lot of insperation from for aladdin
I presume the same for Miramax's "The Thief and the Cobbler".
@@louisduarte8763 I really wish an animation studio with deep pockets could finish that film. It would be amazing.
"Going full Trudeau" 3:58 🤣
12:00 The structure of the movie is weird, but more faithful to how the "1001 Nights" was written.
Besides ending each night with a cliffhanger (so the king won't execute Scheherazade because he wants to hear more the next night), it sometimes goes 4 or 5 "Inception" levels deep, with side characters doing flashbacks to completely unrelated stories (with side characters in those flashbacks having more unrelated stories).
Это верно. Я как то решил почитать оригинальные сказки Шахерезады. Так там внутри одной сказки персонаж рассказывает ещё сказку. Не повесть а матрёшка какая то. Да ещё и стихами порой выражаются персонажи или описанием мусульманского ада и рая.
@@user-nm1gj4qn6w Pryvet. Da.
If you like that sort of thing try Melmoth The Wanderer........now that's one convoluted boxes in boxes storyline. Makes Nolan's Inception seem llike Sesame Street.
Fun fact the actor that played Abu also played Mowgli another future Disney film The Jungle Book in 1942
Another sumptuous production. The way they just created a jungle in studio is amazing.
The Disney side connections are through the roof in this flick.
@@vitorafmonteiro oh my god, because there was an orangutan in the first live action Jungle Book movie, that choice inspired King Louie in Disney’s two animated jungle book movies!
WOW, this was a better live-action Aladdin than Disney's live action Aladdin!
Which doesnt exactly set a high bar. Not that the live action Aladin is that bad, is definitively the less bad of the live actions adaptations, but the guy who plays Aladin is so bland that he brings the whole movie down with him. Is why you dont do casting based only on superficial similarity.
@pedrovallefin8406 I honestly had no problems with they actor they got to play aladdin in the live action version. To me the only problem I had was how they wrote Jafar. The actor I thought did a decent job but I think they wrote him a bit too serious.
@@anthonysandoval5512I kind of wished it was Oded Fehr that played Jafar. He played Ardeth Bay in the Mummy movies, and actually played Jafar in Once Upon a Time 😊.
@@bryanferratt6598 That's a good choice you suggested.
@@anthonysandoval5512I mean a lot of people have suggested that when they saw him 😁.
I saw this as a kid not long after Disney's Aladdin, the hilarious fat Sultan getting murdered was vaguely traumatic.
Back in those days, people didn't sugar coat fairy tales. Horrid things happened to good people ..and bad..... We've become to 'safe' and 'protected' and we've no antibodies of immunity against life anymore.
@@sergiocampanale3882 yeah, I guess disneyfication was inevitable for Momotaro in the Meiji period, decades before Disney was founded.
@@sergiocampanale3882 The much older Momotaro tales are likely much darker and usually have a manlier and older Momotaro. The lighter and softer Momotaro tales that we all know and love (even outside of Japan) often feature a preteen-teenage Momotaro instead for young people to relate more.
2:25 They had extra money left over from not having to put the H in Bagdad, so they gave this guy an extra F in his name.
A possible explanation: the producer Alexander Korda was Hungarian, also one of the writers, Bíró Lajos. I'm Hungarian too and we spell Baghdad without the H.
Arguably, the most correct spelling of Baghdad is بَغدَاد
@@Mereologistit would be if the name wasn’t both pre-Islamic and pre-Arabic. It’d likely old Persian, Indo-Iranian, or Aramaic. It’s so old it’s actually related to the same root language as ancient Slavic.
From what I've heard, due to the large differences between the Latin and Arabic alphabets, there is no single correct way of transliterating names/words between them. "Baghdad" and "Bagdad" are both valid.
@@Duragizer8775 similar to how there are a few ways of spelling yoghurt. It happens when you're shifting between distinct character sets.
Conrad Veidt also played the main villain in Casablanca
What they accomplished for 1940 is damn impressive & always considered this a faux Sinbad film of the later Harryhausen films. Very glad those are being covered next! Absolute classic
"There's a Guy with a Molest-ache at the Palast." YIKES!
I remember a friend of mine telling me I had a molestache once, that was funny. Does that come from anywhere in particular?
I love that Abu's magic Crossbow always does a headshot
Same actor who played Abu was also in a 1940's version of The jungle Book.
Ahh, the first jungle book movie with Mowgli! It definitely inspired Disney’s jungle book films.
I I'm glad that Brandon is tackling in 1940s film. I remember watching this on TNT Monstervision. I love those good old stop motion effects.
The first time I ever heard of this movie was because of TNT Monstervision.
I saw it on Creature Feature with Dr. Paul Bearer in the 1970s.
You sure your not getting this mixed up with the Harryhausen Sinbad movies?
I saw it at some point in my childhood early morning hours when I couldn't sleep)
I like stop motion effects too, but there are none in this film.
13:21 - If Godzilla had showed up we could have called this "The Thief Of Bagdad: Minus One".
18:08 missed opportunity to make a He-Man joke with him calling abu "master of the universe"
The original story is also weird, for the fact that the free wish you see Alladin make in the Disney version ISN'T FREE, it comes from the Genie of a ring that only grants a single wish in the original story. Then conveniently it's oh hey, here's a Genie of a Lamp for more fun wishes!
Also, considering how Djinn liked to use the wishes to backstab people, Abu is DEFINITELY getting the runs from those sausages.
Ja'far Ibn Yahya was a real person, a vizier of Harun al-Rashid. Both of them appear as characters in the Arabian Nights. This version of The Thief of Bagdad seems to be the first film which has him as a villain, although the 'evil advisor' trope is at least as old as Shakespeare.
I read that he was beheaded for treason on what is now believed to be a trumped-up charge. Because of the reverence Sunni Islam holds for Haroun al-Rashid, he was believed guilty, which resulted in him gaining a villainous reputation in folklore.
That's eerily similar to what people do to Rasputin.@@fromthecheapseats7126
My grandmother loved this movie and I watched it with her all the time. It has amazing special effects for the time and I do think they hold up today for the most part. Plus you can tell the obvious influence on Aladdin 52 years later (especially with the villain as a vizier/wizard named Jafar).
This was on UK quite often when I was a child and I thought it was amazing and, to be honest, like the 1930s 'Invisible Man' the effects still hold up.
I LOVE THAT MOVIE! MY #1 FAVORITE!
As a 90's kids, I've been raised, by Disney, thinking that Genies/Djin's are well-meaning goofballs that reference Jack Nicholson. It's charming to see them as they were originally intended, as horrid, malevolent tricksters who want to screw you at every turn. It's like if the latest Peter Pan movie had Tinkerbell as a Fae who made deals with children before stealing them away forever.
Kinda like the current Disney, I too grew up on classic Disney and this is not the good 'ole Disney.
Man, I watched this tons of times with my brother as a kid. Takes me WAY back.
me too. escpecially the scene with the flying horse is etched into my memories.
I love old effects. I love seeing what people were able to convey with what they had at the time. It's creativity after all.
This bodes well for a CMR of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Loved those movies as a kid. EDIT: It's happening! It's happening!
One Sinbad movie had Caroline Munro I am surprised he hasn't covered that one.
If so...great news! And of course, 'Golden Voyage' has a certain Caroline Munro in it so.....
Brandon's review of Golden Voyage will be 85% Caroline Monro comments, 14% Doctor Who comments (because of Tom Baker), and 1% smirking about Golden "voyages" (showers).
@@strawberryhellcat4738 Obviously you're familiar with this channel! But, he may pull out a few nuggets here and there.
@@strawberryhellcat4738 that's right, I forgot Tom Baker was the villain.
That was my favorite Sinbad movie as a kid.
My grandmother showed me this movie when I was about 6 years old on an old school cable TV channel or she had the video tape and I loved it. The memories came flooding back when I saw the name of the video
Sabu Dastagir also was cast as Mowgli in the Jungle Book, another movie with a good production and cast.
Thank you for the video review.
Very accurate djinn
Genie played by Rex Ingram, whom I remember from the 1943 war picture "Sahara" (playing Sgt Major Tambul) with Humphrey Bogart. Sticking with WWII and Humphrey Bogart, Conrad Veidt, who played Jaffar, also played the equally evil Nazi, Major Strasser in the 1942 movie, "Casablanca."
As well as inspiring the Joker during his silent movie days .... The original 'The Man who Laughs'.... as well as being the original zombie in 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari'....and a great career ended as he might have wanted it, dropping dead while playing golf.
Look at those Genie’s eyebrows, is he related to Heihachi Mishima from Tekken lol
The Douglas Fairbanks one is definitely worth a watch.
For the love of god.......all three wishes for you to do ICE PIRATES
I thought that Rex Ingram was awesome as The Genie. I remember seeing this film in a little rundown movie house as a kid, and I thought it was the greatest thing ever.
Great movie, the Criterion DVD has a commentary track with Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola (recored separately) that’s worth listening to.
A new Brandon Tenold on the 1st Friday of a new month. Let's go!
Old fantasy movies like this have a charm to me. I don't know why Hollywood can't make movies with that kind of charm anymore... I think they stopped sometime in the 1980s. I mean, I think they still TRY to...I just don't know why it doesn't work out.
I wonder how “Lord of the Rings” would’ve looked if it has been made in this era.
8:42 OMG! Pink Elephants on Parade! LOL
It falls under the definition of movie magic. It's a must-see, IMO. Dated, but guaranteed a 21st century remake wouldn't be able to capture the same magic.
Dated ?? It's better than alot of films made Today in fact ..
Wow! I loved this movie as kid. My mom introduced it to me and I remember being amazed by the flying effects.
Pumaman never gets old
This is one of my old favorites. It can get so ominous sometimes it was kind of scary. Creepy scary. It's a nice innocent film that just tells a old tale. It's also nice to see this and relax if you lose hope in the films of today, if you just accept it.
This gave me some nice chuckles. Thank you.
The directors - Pressburger and Powell - had form in horror and made some truly nightmarish films like 'The Red Shoes' - "Black Narcissus" - "The Tales of Hoffman" and others. They did not hold back in this one and the combination of horror and joy, dark and light, pain and gaiety is one of the reasons why it works so well even today. - Powell ended his career in disgrace after the release of 'Peeping Tom', a horror film which still holds an 18 certificate today despite being made in 1960...so a true master of the 'dark'
MAN! +10 for that extended length PUMA-MAN music reference. :D
Watching a New Brandon's Cult Movie reviews video the second it gets released "Is Super Easy Barley an Inconvenience"!
Brandon’s videos are tight
Now this almost sounds like a wizard of oz kind of 1940 movie fantasy movie
This movie aired constantly on WGN's Family Classics back in the 1980s when i was a kid. Also, I had a HUGE crush on Sabu; probably the first hint of things to come when I got older.
My awakening was with Disney's "Swiss Family Robinson". Fritz and Ernst, unf.
@@ViegasSilva Bi, actually lol
@@GoGojiraGo Oh really? That's cool 😊
Criterion just released the Sabu Trilogy on 4k. have fun lol!
A old noble ruler with odd facial hair who loves toys? I guess we know where Chitty Chitty Bang Bang got the idea for Baron Bomburst. All we need now is Sabu being kidnapped by the Child Catcher.
Need? That's Ahmad in molest-ache dragging him along to his adventure!
The Genie is this version is just so awesome. Check out the later 1940s movie 1001 Nights if you haven't seen it, Rex Ingram reprises his role of the Genie in it
Thanks as always Brandon. I can always rely on you to give me a smile when I need one!
8:22 oh wow, you got the old ones, nice
And those aren't dolls. Those are action figures!
@@mmattson8947 exactly
70's-80's or 90's?
@@dubuyajay9964 definetly not 90s, probably 80s
I really appreciate how Brandon includes the list of references at the end of the video, its always annoying when someone uses a clip/sound bite from something and I can't find the full thing because they don't say where they got it from
Mr. Tenold, I cannot thank you enough for making these videos. A new video from you is like a glass of water in the middle of the desert, and it also lifts my spirits a while. Thank you for being a critiquing smartass.
17:00 puts sword in mouth just to drop it. Lol!
I like to think he was trying to look cool but almost immediately cut his tongue on it
@@brigidmadden5577 Yeah. Never put the sharp edge of the blade in your mouth. LOL
The movie was a big inspiration for disneys Aladdin.
Definitely.
Gee, whatever gave you that idea?????? /s
Yeah, I think that's Brandon's point.
Disney's Aladdin is basically a remake of this and has next to nothing in common with the actual story of Aladdin.
I just discovered your channel a couple of weeks ago thanks to youtube algorithm. I just want to say thank you! Ive been binging you and your hysterical. You've brought me so much laughter! Always a pleasure to watch you!
8:23 Nice collection U got.
Abu at the end "I'm a New York City girl. It's a little too quiet around here for me."
I think people in the 1940s had more things to worry about than casting appropriate actors in a movie.
Yes but this is RUclips
@@FP194 where even Brandon Tenold has to call out movies made in the 1940s that don’t match up to modern day culture and sensibilities.
@@Martynde And he is wrong, regardless. Plenty of Middle Easterners can and do identify as white--the two terms are not mutually exclusive. I'm surprised he'd make such a mistake, considering he's not American (though his audience largely is, no doubt).
The whole 'white' definition changes (with time and place) so much as to be useless. From 'only Nordics allowed' to anyone from around the Mediterranean extending far into the three continents surrounding it. It does make sense however to depict a big cosmopolitan city as drawing on a variety of groups, which is what the move-makers attempted to do.
the first half part of the 40's? Sure, the rest of them and the couple of decades before and the decades later a lot lot less.
I love these old movie reviews. :)
Your collectibles are impressive. Most impressive.
Awsome review dude! I have fond memories watching films like this as a kid on Saturday mornings. Thank you once again.
One of my father's favorite movies. He loved Rex Ingraham's genie.
One thing worth mentioning, Miles Malleson played the Sultan of Bosra. He was also in Hound of the Baskervilles, Dracula, Brides of Dracula (all from Hammer) and The First Men in the Moon (1964).
I agree that usually flashback takes up only a few minutes or the entire movie. Also the genie flying 😂, I do love the sets they made. Also Abu should of been a hit man, I mean he shot two men (including Jafar) in the head with his crossbow.
Great to see these classics appreciated
I am HYPED for this oncoming series of Arabian Nights-inspired fantasy films!
Also if you wanna talk influential fantasy movies with award-winning effects and makeup; sometime consider tackling George Pal's "The Seven Faces of Dr. Lao" - its got apparitions of horny satyrs, snakes with moustaches, a dream sequence of biblical tier destruction, the Loch Ness Monster, and Tony Randle in yellowface dropping some genuine truth bombs of wisdom, among other things.
Did Hollywood never made "Hatim Tai" movies. Those were my personal favorite in Arabian nights genre .
The effects of this movie is just unbeliavable for 1940. And also all the set pieces the evil wizards, automatons, giant spiders, underground dungeons statues with jewels are big inspirations for fantasy genre especially tabletop games like dungeons and dragons and video games like Prince of Persia .
19:35 The midi cover is fine, it even adds to the joke I think. The Dingo Pictures Aladin song would have also sufficed.
Fun fact: Sabu was up for the role of Kunta Kinte in the movie "Roots" but didn't get the job because he was dead.
The visual effects for this are so much better than Cats.
Fairbanks version audio was used in Jon & Vangelis Friends of Mr Cairo album.
I saw this movie on WGN Family Classics years ago, and it wasn't so much the vasir remark that made Abu jump on his magic carpet and cut out as it was the thought of having to go to a school.
21:17
Yeah, gotta agree here. A while ago I accidentally stumbled across the original 1924 silent movie on TV, and that one definitely had more in terms of action and adventure than the 1940 one.
It is said that King Herod used to go out in disguise and walk around Jerusalem and see if he can see people talking BS about him.
One of the Ottoman sultans did this too - Murad IV, I believe. Except if he caught someone doing illegal stuff or badmouthing him, he'd reveal his identity and behead them on the spot!
There are stories of rulers doing this in most cultures. The end results vary a bit, but it's a widespread habit.
When the powerful & rich get bored.. 😄
This also occurs in Henry V.
@@NefariousKoel and paranoid
The inspiration for “Undercover Boss.”
Thanks for the Krull reference, that spider scene scarred my childhood lol
Something about effects that are less than perfectly real is they can elevate a sense of the the unreal, and this movie certainly does that. Bits that stuck with me from seeing it as a kid include...
(i) The spider and octopus within the one setting - did somebody have a thing for eight limbs in the production staff?
(ii) Jaffar's horse just falling apart at the end. It was extra-odd because I forgot it had come packed that way.
Conrad Veitt is essentially if Bruce Campbell got pissed at his government and went on to play villains in award winning foreign movies
8:17
Brandon: “The sultan is an adult and he still had toys? What a man child.”
Me fake cough: “ahem. Cough.” 👉🏻 Points over to his wall.
Brandon: “Hey those are collectibles. That’s different.”
15:33, 17:36 here comes MST3K effects
15:39 Pumaman theme: “🎵Pumaman, flys like a moron. Dick’s red owl, selection and service. Snyder drug, we’re busting up prices. Glory to space gods in the highest. And glory to “the Pumaman”, and glory to the goofy Aztec Mask🎶.”
The Genie is also the inspiration for Alex Toth's Shazzan design, 1966 Hanna Barbera cartoon.
"Those are collectibles!"
Bwahahahahahahaha!
It's a restrained and tasteful display compared to many I see here on RUclips.
Quite sad, many other film projects at the time probably weren't able to continue filming and have been either lost or destroyed in the Blitz at Pinewood (our UK version of Hollywood) before they could be completed.
That MST3K sound bite was perfectly timed.
I love the lone Jet Jaguar among his Star Wars collection!
Had to pause on the toy collection. I love that I had every Star Wars toy Brandon has, when I was a kid. Seeing all of them brought back lots of memories. For a moment, it was like I was six years old again. ❤
Thanks so much, I had parts of this movie on my mind for so long.
I couldn't remember it clearly because I was so young from so long ago.
Gotta love a krull reference
The Ken of Bagdad
Given how the Simpsons had a trend of doing anthology episodes imagine if they did a parody with the thief being Apu.
Welp, guess I'm adding this to my upcoming Retro Movie Marathon with my siblings. Thanks Brandon
14:38 Welp Now I know what a shaved Grinch would look like! 😂
"Bagdads ruler will be over thrown and the city liberated "..
Sultan Bush: Hold my 🍺 😅😅😅
Disney actually made a live-action Aladdin prior to the animated one. (Rifftrax has it.) That version stars white people playing Chinese people. So Disney also ripped-off white people playing other races from this movie.
The Justin Trudeau joke was great.