A delightful bit of campy romantic adventure is one of the silliest films of the 1980's, up there with "Sheena" and "The Pirate Movie" and anything with Pia Zadora that you can't take your eyes off of it for a minute. It makes "Ishtar" seem like a masterpiece. At the center of it all is Brooke Shields, trying hard to emulate a brunette Carole Lombard but nowhere near as appealing. She's immature and obviously spoiled, and the fact that she has every man in the film pining for her is laughable. It's 1927 and the newly orphaned Shields puts on a mustache to disguise herself so she can participate in a pointless car race across the Sahara. The evil shiek John Rhys-Davies tries to rape her and she manages to escape, passing out in the heat and nearly covered by scorpions. Rhys-Davies' handsome nephew Lambert Wilson comes to her rescue, but he is nearly as bad as his uncle when it comes to controlling women. Of course she is easily seduced because he's every young ladies Arab fantasy.
This is a 10/10 as far as entertainment value and camp quotient is concerned as it is ridiculous to the extreme. Shields is like other great Hollywood beauties in the sense that she's a beautiful block of driftwood, unable to convince the audience on any strong emotional level. Contrast that to the legendary John Mills, playing an Arab of British birth who becomes her protector. But it's nothing more than a Penelope Pittstop/Dudley Doo Right cartoon with a bit of Scooby Doo mixed in. A frightening scene has two of her admires buried up to throat head covered by beatles and having scorpions waved in their face in an effort to make her submit to the piggish sexual desires of the disgusting Rhys-Davies.
The highlight of the film is the location photography and the costumes, very realistic in period detail. A beautiful musical theme aides in the cinematic power of the good points of the film which reminds me of those Maria Montez color adventures of the 1940's, even with a young Arab boy that could have easily played by Sabu, and Wilson in the type of role that Turhan Bey or Jon Hall would have played. The cliched one dimension of Rhys-Davies would have been perfect for Lon Chaney. So this is rather old fashioned even by 80's standards, although the disgusting elements of Rhys-Davies are far more graphic than what you could have done back in Hollywood's golden years. It's a film you won't soon forget, complete with large cats and plenty of cliff hanger moments that would have made for a great 40's serial.
This is a 10/10 as far as entertainment value and camp quotient is concerned as it is ridiculous to the extreme. Shields is like other great Hollywood beauties in the sense that she's a beautiful block of driftwood, unable to convince the audience on any strong emotional level. Contrast that to the legendary John Mills, playing an Arab of British birth who becomes her protector. But it's nothing more than a Penelope Pittstop/Dudley Doo Right cartoon with a bit of Scooby Doo mixed in. A frightening scene has two of her admires buried up to throat head covered by beatles and having scorpions waved in their face in an effort to make her submit to the piggish sexual desires of the disgusting Rhys-Davies.
The highlight of the film is the location photography and the costumes, very realistic in period detail. A beautiful musical theme aides in the cinematic power of the good points of the film which reminds me of those Maria Montez color adventures of the 1940's, even with a young Arab boy that could have easily played by Sabu, and Wilson in the type of role that Turhan Bey or Jon Hall would have played. The cliched one dimension of Rhys-Davies would have been perfect for Lon Chaney. So this is rather old fashioned even by 80's standards, although the disgusting elements of Rhys-Davies are far more graphic than what you could have done back in Hollywood's golden years. It's a film you won't soon forget, complete with large cats and plenty of cliff hanger moments that would have made for a great 40's serial.