THE MAGIC CARPET (1951)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

I saw CARPET long ago and remembered little about it but the unusual presence of Lucille Ball in a Hollywood "Arabian knockwurst" (my term for all the low-budget Oriental fantasies that got ground out like sausages). While producer Sam Katzman was never known for excellence in any genre, I have found that a couple of his Oriental sausages were silly fun, such as THIEF OF DAMASCUS and THE SIREN OF BAGDAD. Additonally, CARPET's director was Lew Landers, who produced some favorite horror-films, such as the 1935 RAVEN and THE RETURN OF THE VAMPIRE. Unfortunately, this flick, which as far as I can tell was Katzman's first venture in Arabian Nights terrain, is ordinary in every way.  

At least the film starts off with action, as some Caliph (let's say it's in Baghdad) getting assassinated on the same day he proclaims the birth of his newborn son. The Caliph's court is massacred and a usurper named Ali (Gregory Gaye) takes over, along with his vizier Boreg (Raymond Burr) and Ali's capricious sister Narah (Ball). However, a servant escapes with the newborn with the aid of the titular flying carpet. The dying servant leaves the infant and the carpet with a virtuous couple, and the carpet is squirreled away while the couple raises the boy as their own over the next twenty years. The child grows into the man Ramoth (John Agar), and once he's an adult Ramoth is mighty wroth with the tyrannies of Caliph Ali. In approved Zorro fashion he fabricates a masked identity, The Scarlet Falcon (though he's not often seen masked) and organizes a resistance movement.

All the familiar swashbuckling tropes are dutifully hauled out. A beautiful young woman named Lida (Patricia Medina) joins the rebellion against the Falcon's wishes, and of course the two fall in love, though she doesn't prove to be much of a fighter. Ramoth gets a chance to infiltrate the Caliph's palace by curing Ali's long spate of hiccups (don't ask), but I'm blamed if I remember what comes about because of this action. I also forget how Lida becomes a member of Narah's harem, which leads to a minor set-to when Narah slaps Lida. (Medina claimed in an interview that Ball hit her for real.) Neither the hero nor the villains seem to do much of anything but run through the motions, until the moment that Ramoth is informed of his heritage and of the secret weapon of the flying carpet, which the hero uses to overcome the villains and be united with his lady love. Oh, and Ramoth gets to swordfight Boreg, so there's that.

Though I imagine the use of the carpet was inspired by the climax of the 1940 THIEF OF BAGDAD, the extremely paltry special FX probably didn't inspire even the most uncritical viewers in 1951. Some of the lead actors in these knockwursts have brought a little charisma to the formula stories, but John Agar is horribly dull in the role, and even Medina, who played many such exotic roles, can't do anything with her part. Of the three villains, Ball gets the best lines and is almost the only reason to see the movie, which premiered days before the launching of her successful I LOVE LUCY teleseries. Ostensibly Ball, who had never quite hit her stride on the big screen, had to complete some obligation to Columbia Pictures and accepted the role even though she knew CARPET was junk. Her breakthrough as a TV comedienne gave her a second life in cinema, though she still dominantly worked in TV. But for what little it's worth, this moldy oldie is the only time actors like Ball and Agar delved into the domain of the superhero-adjacent fantasy.