I recently enjoyed a Maria Montez screen fest over a three day period. I watched these six movies she made with Universal Pictures from 1942 to 1945, which was during the height of her stardom: ARABIAN NIGHTS, ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES, WHITE SAVAGE, GYPSY WILDCAT, SUDAN, and COBRA WOMAN. (From 1945 on, Yvonne DeCarlo would supplant her as Universal’s exotic looking screen beauty and leading woman star.) These are all fantastical fun, filled with lavish sets and costumes. Matte paintings used for sweeping landscapes are themselves impressive works of art in these films. No need for special effects, other than an occasional explosion in a few of the movies, including a volcanic eruption in COBRA WOMAN (made in 1943, but released in ‘44).
Three of these Technicolor spectacles costar the lovely Sabu and four feature the suave Turhan Bey. All of them star the mediocre but sufficiently handsome John Hall, five of them in which he plays the love interest for Montez’s character. The last one, SUDAN (1945), has Turhan Bey in this role, albeit sans any complete on-screen kiss between him and Ms. Montez, which I found puzzling and disappointing.
Maria Montez is either a princess or a queen in five of these productions, and a countess in one of them. The Dominican screen diva is fabulous in all, typecast as she was and much to her understandable dismay. These films are cult classics, the most well known probably being COBRA WOMAN, where she plays a princess who is also a high priestess. That is my favorite of the six, with ALI BABA AND THE FORTY THIEVES (1943, but released in early ‘44) and SUDAN being close seconds. Ms. Montez wears the most spectacular gowns in COBRA WOMAN and SUDAN, in which she portrays an ancient Egyptian queen. It is in the latter of the two that she seems to have the most costume changes, with one of her headdresses– appearing to involve gold lame– looking positively sublime. Then and there, the sensual Latina actress exudes both a sense of royalty and divinity.
These movies are a grand mix of theatricality and the cinematic, including some decent cinematography thrown in. With each one running less than ninety minutes long (five of them under eighty minutes), they’re all a fast moving blend of action, drama, and comic relief. For true cinemaphiles, such as myself, all six productions are visual delights, even though the scripts are pretty routine. But, one does not watch these for literary enrichment. They are colorful works of art with very high camp aesthetics, celebrations of spectacle. Long live the memories of Maria Montez, Sabu, and Turhan Bey in all their Technicolor glory.
The Practical, Fanciful Pagan 