The Flame of Araby (1951)

The Flame of Araby is a 1951 swashbuckler from Universal starring Maureen O’Hara and Jeff Chandler. It’s pretty much a stock-standard representative of that genre but that’s no bad thing. Even the second-tier Hollywood swashbucklers of that era were usually decent entertainment. This one definitely is second-tier but it’s competently executed.

Jeff Chandler is Tamerlane, a Bedouin horse trader who has become obsessed by the idea of capturing a mighty black stallion that is leading a herd of wild horses. He almost succeeds but a woman on horseback gets in the way. Tamerlane is annoyed and gives her bottom a good spanking. This was actually a risky thing to do since the woman turns out to be the Princess Tanya. Princesses have been known to have men’s heads removed from their shoulders for subjecting them to such indignities. On the other hand if the stranger is well-built and good-looking then sometimes princesses don’t mind having their bottoms spanked. Princess Tanya doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Tamerlane and his sidekick are on their way to Tunis to sell a valuable mare. Princess Tanya soon discovers that she has big problems to face (much bigger problems than being spanked by a handsome Bedouin), Her father, the King of Tunis, has been suddenly taken ill and is dying. The King suspects that he has been poisoned.

The King makes his brother and heir Prince Medina promise to look after Princess Tanya but we know this is not going to happen because we only need one look at Medina to know he’s a bad ’un. Our fears prove to be well-founded. Medina intends to give Tanya in marriage to one of the very unpleasant cut-throat Barbarossa corsair lords of whom he is rather afraid. Medina is a villain motivated more by cowardice than ambition.

Tamerlane immediately gets on the wrong side of the pirates when he kills one of them in a quarrel over a wench. He didn’t even particularly want the wench in question. Now the pirates are after him.

Tanya is trying to find a way of getting out of the marriage Medina is planning for her. She will have to choose one of the two Barbarossa brothers and she’s horrified by the thought either way. Her plan is to tell them she’ll marry whichever of them wins a horse race. That’s a foolish plan since Barbarossa brothers own the two swiftest horses in the kingdom but Tanya is not a fool and there’s a bit more to her plan. The important thing is to persuade the brothers to accept her proposal, and they do accept.

From very early on you can predict everything that is going to happen in this movie. The script by Gerald Drayson Adams contains no surprises. That’s not necessarily a huge problem. A predictable plot well executed can make for a very entertaining swashbuckler. And this one is fairly well executed (technically at least) by director Charles Lamont.

If Tamerlane captures that stallion he’s going to have to tame it. And if he captures Princess Tanya he’s going to have to tame her as well. Of course it’s possible that she has plans to tame him, but she won’t want to tame him too much. Winning her will be a test of his manhood and Tanya clearly likes her men to be bold and masculine. That’s really what the entire story comes down to.

The biggest problem is that there’s a certain lack of spectacle. There is some spectacle but not quite enough. Mostly the movie looks like a B western. It looks like a handsome B western, not surprising with Russell Metty doing the cinematography. There’s perhaps also not quite enough action.

Maureen O’Hara was always solid in roles such as this, as long as you can accept an Irish redhead as an Arab princess. Jeff Chandler is an adequate hero.

You might think I became a bit obsessed by the spanking scene but in fact it’s the movie that is obsessed with it. It’s referred to over and over again throughout the movie. You could say it’s the core of the movie because that’s the point at which Tanya realises that Tamerlane is her kind of man, and he realises that she is his kind of woman. This is a very politically incorrect movie.

The Universal Vault Series DVD is fullframe which is quite correct.

I have a few problems with this movie. It’s really just a western rather than a swashbuckler and it lacks visual inspiration. It just isn’t in the same league as other similar swashbucklers of its era such as The Golden Blade or the excellent The Desert Hawk.

Maybe worth a rental if you’re a keen Maureen O’Hara fan.