Lost in a Harem

USA 1944
produced by
George Haight for MGM
directed by Charles Reisner
starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Marilyn Maxwell, John Conte, Douglass Dumbrille, Lottie Harrison, Lock Martin, Murray Leonard, Adia Kuznetzoff, Milton Parsons, Ralph Sanford, Jimmy Dorsey and his Orchestra, James Clemens, Harry Cording, Sondra Rodgers, Richard Alexander, Dorothea Dodd, Eddie Dunn, Clair Freeman, Nickolai, Frank Hagney, Tor Johnson, Jack Stoney, Duke York, Feodor Chaliapin jr
written by Harry Ruskin, John Grant, Harry Crane, music by Nathaniel Shilkret

Abbott & Costello

review by
Mike Haberfelner

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Somewhere in the Orient: Somehow, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, along with blonde Hazel (Marilyn Maxwell), have come to play a vital role in Prince Ramo's (John Conte) plans to reconquer his throne from his treacherous uncle Nimativ (Douglass Dumbrille), who keeps his subjects in line using his hypnotic rings and who is looking for a blonde for his harem, whom he thinks to have found in Hazel. Soon he has captured Hazel and put her under his spell, and hilarity (read modest laughs) ensues when Abbott and Costello try to free the girl and steal the rings, but in the end it all ends happily and the Prince himself ends up with Hazel.

An unfunny comedy that's one of the better Abbott and Costello flicks nevertheless as it at least doesn't feature too many of their tired routines. The film still features plenty of comedy missfires (especially an extended scene in a prison cell with Murray Leonard playing a derelict comes to mind), and as in most of their films you can't but wonder why two people who so completely lack on-screen comedy would form a comedy team, especially since one of them (Abbott) doesn't even try to be funny and seems to be content with being mean to the other and slapping him.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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