"The Adventures of Hajji Baba" is a really bad film that looks great. For some reason, this film looks like an A-picture...with glorious Technicolor, some lovely sets and a longer running time than a B-movie, though it's not even good enough or believable enough to be a B due to some godawful writing and silly casting!

The story is set in Persia, a land where everyone looks and sounds like they attended charm school in the United States....well, all but the willful princess, whose part is just written horribly. She spends most of the movie pouting, screaming and bellowing like a cow with a migraine! The scene at the bath early in the film is simply godawful! This woman describes herself as a '17 year-old' early in the film....but Elaine Stewart clearly is in her mid-20s and just comes off ridiculously....no, BADLY. I can't see how this film in any way helped her career.

The bottom line is that the dialog is terrible, the story silly and yet the film LOOKS nice and features the inexplicably singing of Nat King Cole....yes, Nat King Cole in a movie set in Persia! His voice is like butter...but certainly NOT to be mistaken for a Persian! Overall, a silly and insipid film that only gets worse with age.

Tedious pacing and the repetitive Nat King Cole song makes this an empty hour glass where the sand evaporated rather than shifted. Barber John Derek kidnaps Arabic princess Elaine Stewart for her own protection to keep her out of the hands of the evil Paul Picerni who wants to take over caliph Donald Randolph's throne. They join the caravan of merchant Thomas Gomez, are hijacked by the tribe of Amazons (led by Amanda Blake) and face various adventures in trying to prevent Picerni from conquering Randolph.

No magic carpets or genies in bottles, just trite and cliched dialog and characters (especially Gomez),with cartoonish color photography and no element of surprise even in the most dangerous of situations. Even when Stewart and Derek are bound and left for the vultures to feast on, there's never any doubt that they'll escape. Derek and Stewart have nice chemistry, but their love scenes interrupted by the theme song over and over is just annoying.

The presence of Blake and her band of female soldiers is a unique twist, but they are written with little consistency. Considering that this ambitious production was made by the studio formerly known as Monogram, I should be impressed by the scope, but there has to be something more than just widescreen to help it stand the test of time.

More fabulous than the tales of the Arabian Nights .. more exciting than the travels of Marco Polo .. more spectacular than the splendors of Kubla Khan ! It deals with a rogue young called Haji . Who's Hajji ¿ Hajii ; John Derek was the most romantic barber and masseur who ever lived , the joy-boy of every harem from Ispahan to Istanbul . Along the way Hajji falls in love for a gorgeous princess : Elaine Stewart and both of them are captured by a tribe of brave Amazon women commanded by a tough leader : Amanda Blake .

Orient adventure movie with thrills , emotion , fights , dazzling spectacle of swordplay, and colorful scenarios . Although the story has been told earlier , tight filmmaking and sympathetic performances win out . Stars John Derek who gives a likable acting as the stalwart hero attempting to save a princess . Derek was an actor and director of considerable success , however, being most known for his marriages to famous stars as Linda Evans , Ursula Andress and Bo Derek . His partenaire is the beauty Elaine Stewart , a young actress who had limited hits . Being accompanied by a good cast such as Thomas Gómez, Paul Picerni, Claude Akins, Laurette Luez , Rosemarie Stack who married actor Robert Stack and Amanda Blake of "Gunsmoke" series .

Here outstanding the brilliant and glimmer cinematography in Universal Studios style by Harold Lipstein, photographed with the revolutionary new anamorphic lens in Cinemascope, Color by De Luxe . And hear Nat King Cole sing the nation's newest son hit "Hajji Baba" , along with the evocative soundtrack by the classic composer Dimitri Tiomkin . The motion picture produced by Walter Wanger in medium budget was professionally directed by Don Weiss. This filmmaker was a fine craftsman usually working for television , shooting episodes of known series as Bareta , Mannix, The Virginian, Batman , Kolchak, Planet of Apes , Wide Country , Twilight Zone Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Checkmate, Aquanauts , The Detectives, The Thin Man, Wagon Train, Burke's Law, Perry Mason, Ironside , Hawaii 5.0 , The Immortal, Rodeo and several others . And occasionally for the big screen as Gene Krupa story , Billie , Pajana Party , Half a Hero, A Slight case of Larceny, The Ghost and the invisible bikini and this Adventures of Hajii Baba . Rating : 6/10 , attractive and decent oriental aventure but no extraordinary .