Go East, Young Toon (Part 1)

For many and many decades, before crises in the Middle East became headline news, a sub-genre of story-lines regularly permeated both live-action and animated cinema, which could be referred to as the “Eastern”. Not East as in the near East of the American colonies. Not tales of steamy jungles or tropical islands such as on the far East of the Asian continent. But smack in the middle of the continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia, in the heat of the Sahara, the royal courts of Ancient Egypt, or the lands of the Arabian Nights. Certain films were likely instrumental in rooting demand for this sort of exotic story in theater-going audiences. Douglas Fairbanks’ “The Thief of Bagdad” was precisely the type of tale to cath the public eye. Then there were the myriad of filmings of the tale “Beau Geste” to popularize military sagas of the French Foreign Legion. And what survey of cinema hits for this style could possibly be complete without noting the impact upon the feminine patrons of Rudolf Valentino’s “The Sheik” and “Son of the Sheik” – films that introduced a new slang into the language, where any male trying fervently to pitch woo could be labeled with tongue-in-cheek as just another “Sheik”. As usual, when a trend caught on in mainstream cinema, animation wasn’t far behind in following – resulting in the gradual rise of “Eastern” adventures for cartoon stars commencing during the 1920’s. Such films would continue to be generated at least into the 1970’s – then suffer a drop-off as images of the mystic lands of antiquity became eclipsed by contemporary images of political turmoil, in which many viewers from many lands felt obliged to choose sides. Yet, even in such troubled days, Disney could still turn to a classic tale of antiquity and attempt to forget the present, scoring a successful franchise with the hit feature, “Aladdin”.

Like Disney, we too will attempt to remove ourselves from the present, turning back the clock to a day when anything “Eastern” seemed to spawn images of romantic moonlit desert nights, mysterious caravans led by daring tribes of horsemen with a flair for the ladies, and brave legionnaires dashingly patrolling the sands or holding down the forts against impossible odds (even though, in retrospect, these military endeavors could well be classified as nothing short of standard imperial colonialism). But in those days, no one really thought about the stories’ repercussions seriously. All anyone wanted was someone handsome on camera to be labeled (at least for an hour of so) as the hero and dazzle us with his savoir-faire and amorous escapades. It was a much more innocent (if naive) time, and, as so many of these films were made and achieved popularity, it would be unfair to our images of cinema history to sweep these films under the rug as non-PC or misguided in their character portrayals and/or slants in favor of one opponent or the other. As we have commonly done on this site in other instances of stereotype and/or subject matters not fitting with contemporary values, we shall attempt not to pass judgment upon the animation greats of the past out of the context of their times, and instead try to attain an appreciation for their efforts to keep up with well-entrenched film genres and apply to them their unique senses of finding ways to make us laugh, lampooning cliches, and displaying their own directorial styles in presentation and cinematography. In short, we hope to have as much fun in examining their work as they probably did in making them.

A further word of introduction is needed to explain how I’ll attempt to keep this topic from getting too unwieldy in sheer number of films to discuss. The classic tales of the Arabian Nights provided subject matter for many an animated film – in fact, too many when it came to one particular story. That of Aladdin. It sees as if nearly everyone has had some entry dealing either with finding Aladdin’s actual lamp, or discovering some other cooped-up genie of nearly-equal power but possible differing demeanor or motivation. As I indicated in my first article when inaugurating these Animation Trails columns, I hoped to avoid surveys devoted to the umpteen-hundred retellings of the same classic story or fairy tale (I referenced “Jack and the Beanstalk” as one such instance, lampooned on film by everybody and his brother). Thus, I will for this series take pains not to discuss stories either involving Aladdin or genies (possibly at most reserving them as a subject unto themselves for future discussion in another article series). There will, however, be the rare instance where a film primarily focused on another type of Eastern story might include some stray gag or plot angle that crosses over into the genie world (a certain Bugs Bunny title, which you might guess, comes to mind), in which case such a film may receive discussion in the pages to follow. But, to the greatest extent possible, the rule of thumb for this trail will be as unswerving as Edna’s fashion-sense in Pixar’s “The Incredibles” – No genies! However, other Arabian classic tales not as blatantly overdone by the studio systems – such as those of Ali Baba or Sinbad, will be fair game.

We’ll be covering subject films this week more by series than by true chronological order. As is typical, a survey of animated entries in the silent era, when the desert epic was coming unto its own, finds a number of films conspicuous by their absence, either the victims of considerable rarity or of utter loss to the sands of time, preventing our viewing or knowledge of their content. Among these missing are Paul Terry’s “Desert Sheiks” from the Aesop’s Fables series (7/3/24), and “Felix the Cat Shatters the Sheik” (Pat Sullivan/Educational, 9/19/26). This latter title is represented by a movie poster, and is also stated by IMDB to partially exist in a large fragment, though a complete print is presumed lost, and it is perhaps from this unposted fragment (or maybe from trade reviews) that a brief synopsis is provided by said site for this film, as follows:

“Felix lands a job as a mascot for an umbrella salesman, and travels to the Arabian desert. They have a hard time selling umbrellas in the desert, until Felix makes a deal with a bird concerning a cloud above a convention of desert sheiks.”

Odd. I would think umbrellas might be handy to provide shade from the desert sun!

However, there are survivors from both of these theatrical series that fit neatly into out trail. Farmer Al Falfa and the Aesop’s animals provide us with Red Hot Sands (Terry/Pathe, 8/14/27). It is very much the usual loose-as-a goose style of presentation we tend to associate with early Terry work, with random gags set in an Arabian desert. Al’s cat and a mouse ride a camel, which at intervals splits down the middle between humps, revealing a hidden hollow compartment within where the cat hides a booze bottle (only to have the camel retract his head inside his own body, to snatch the bottle away). Farmer Al comes along, looking more like Ben Hur wearing a fez, commanding a chariot pulled by two oxen rolling along on roller skates! A fat harem girl in a mule-drawn cart is kicked by her steed, and lands atop Al’s oxen team, driving it and herself into a crater in the sand, and leaving Al without transportation. Al roams the desert, his tongue hanging out and perspiring profusely. He attempts to obtain food from a lonely coconut tree, but a gorilla also residing in its fronds (a gorilla in the desert?) socks him in the jaw, then tosses the two coconuts Al has shaken down back up into the tree, assuming their original positions. Al disappears from the cartoon and is never seen again. Meanwhile, Al’s cat and the mouse have an up-close and personal encounter with the Sphinx, raising its giant eyelid to be spied upon by one eye, then almost swallowed by its mouth. The cat gets revenge by blowing snuff into the Sphinx’s nose, causing the creature to sneeze and flip its wig. The pair next encounter a palace, where they ogle the swaying limbs of a female cat named Harem Helen as she dances before the throne of a Shiek (who actually looks more like a Pharaoh). Between shimmies, Helen manages to pass the cat a note, begging him to rescue her from the Shiek. The cat does so in cowboy style, tossing into the palace a lariat, and lassoing the girl to yank her over the palace wall. The Sheik orders out his troops – armored warriors astride galloping lions. The cat counters their spear-tossing with shots from a pistol with a four-foot long barrel (needing a cannon’s ramrod to load), but neither side seems to score any hits on their opponent. Finally, the camel carrying the two cats and the mouse reaches a pyramid. Twice, the camel attempts to scale its angled side, but slides back down to the base. The cat instructs the mouse to use a crank, located within the camel’s front knee, with which the mouse retracts the front legs of the camel to half their usual length. Now, with the camel’s front legs only half as tall as its hindquarters, the camel is at the correct angle to scale the pyramid while leaving its passengers entirely on the level instead of at a slant. Once at the top, the two cats and the mouse hitch a ride on a large passing bird, taking off from the pyramid summit, while the camel stays behind, kicking like a mule to repel each of the approaching lion-riding warriors. As the good guys fly away atop their avian friend, the cat raises one wing of the bird to eclipse himself from camera view, and when the mouse lowers the wing to take a peek, we see the tomcat kissing Harem Helen. The mouse knows when three is a crowd, and retreats to the tail of the bird, offering his help in hastening their trip rather than playing the nosybody, by detaching the bird’s long legs, and using them as rowing oars to increase the speed of their travel.

From a later season of Felix the Cat comes Arabiantics (5/13/28). Surviving prints unfortunately are rescored for sound, excising balloon-dialogue lines or intertitles from the original, and likely losing some good punch-lines. Nevertheless, from what we can make out from the pantomime, night time is falling, and Felix would like to get some sleep – but currently is without a home. He looks at the town for possible prospects of where to spend the night, but watches all the lights of the town go out, and realizes there is no one else awake to impose upon for an evening’s board. What to do? Well, a little drink of milk might stimulate the idea cells – so he pulls out one and starts to drink. An Arabian-garbed salesman happens to be sitting on the curb, half-asleep from lack of business, surrounded by Persian rugs which are his wares. He hears Felix drinking, opens his eyes, and first reaches out aggressively as if to chase Felix away or grab the milk bottle. But in fact, he only wishes to offer a trade. One carpet for one milk bottle. Quickly, a deal is made, and Felix walks off with one of the rugs rolled under his arm. He unfolds the rug in a clearing, and settles down upon it, thinking it a comfortable place to sleep. Well, not so comfortable as that – as the rug begins to vibrate wildly, then rises off the ground. It is a magic flying carpet! Felix holds on for dear life, as the carpet zooms forward through the sky, proceeding on through the night all the way to Arabia.

At daybreak, the carpet reaches a desert setting, and settles down for a soft landing atop a small hill. Oops – we’ll replace “small hill” with “camel’s back”. The camel gallops across the desert, with Felix along for the ride. It reaches the arched entrance to a walled city, where the camel’s hump is so tall, Felix crashes head-first into the archway, and is knocked off along with his rug. Nevertheless, Felix is happy to have found some form of civilization, and enters the city’s bazaar, wondering what adventures might await him. A merchant eyes his rug, reaches out to feel its material, and offers Felix another trade. Felix seems in no particular hurry to return to his home of no roof over his head, and appears to be fed up with carpet transportation – so he barters away the magic rug in return for a sack containing a fortune in jewels. Felix walks away with his new stash, then stops at the foot of a palace wall to pull out some of the gems and admire them in the sunlight. Above him on a balcony emerges a short Sheik, who peers down, and is instantly dazzled by Felix’s bag of booty. Something he must have. But this Shiek is not of a bargaining persuasion – instead, his specialty is larceny. He calls for a hoard of small mice, who form a chain by clinging to each other’s tails (much like the classic “Barrel of Monkeys” game), lowering their lead mouse to street level, to grab away Felix’s jewel bag while he is preoccupied examining a solitary necklace. The rest of the jewels thus disappear back onto the balcony, without a trace. Shocked Felix looks all around for his missing treasure, then finally spots what looks like the same bag, just inside of an open window. Felix reaches in – but finds he has grabbed the burnoose of another Arab by mistake. The Arab engages in a fist-fight with Felix, getting in the first telling blows to Felix’s dome. But Felix, defying the laws of perspective, grabs what seems to be a distant palm tree on the horizon, which converts into a whisk-broom size with which to dust off the protruding belly of his opponent – then socks the Arab repeatedly in the breadbasket. The Arab keels over on the ground, and Felix removes the Arab’s white beard, to clean the dust off himself after the fight.

Well, all this has still brought Felix no closer to recovering his jewels. Rounding another corner of the palace, Felix spies an open arched doorway, and peers in, discovering several lovely ladies of a palace harem. On the other end of the large rom sits the Sheik – with Felix’s jewel bag in his oily grip. The Sheik begins extracting large handfuls of jewels from the sack, and, much like a carnival ring-toss, distributes full sets of jewels and pearls to each of his harem girls with each toss, leaving them all glittering with his ill-gotten gains. Felix isn’t going to sit for this – but how to go about it without an all-out confrontation with the Sheik? A simple Felix-solution presents itself. Again defying perspective, Felix spots what appears to be the rising moon against the horizon, with the trunks of two thin palm trees standing in the ground ahead of the cosmic orb. Felix yanks the whole image out of the horizon line, converting the outlines into a banjo! Felix then takes a position under a palace balcony, and begins to play a hot serenade to the harem in their bedchambers above. The girls are immediately taken by the spell of the music, and begin to dance and sway. Felix increases the tempo – until the girls come out on the balcony, and shimmy and shake with all their might. All this vibration can only mean one thing. One by one, the jewels with which the girls are bedecked begin to fall off. They fall in a torrent from the balcony ledge, dropping to the street, to land in a growing pile at Felix’s feet. As Felix’s song concludes, so does the girls’ supply of jewels – all right back where they belong within Felix’s grasp. Felix gives his hearty signature laugh, and we iris out.

During the late period when Max Fleischer renamed his famous “Out of the Inkwell” series as “The Inkwell Imps”, two of KoKo’s adventures appear to have presented Arabian themes, First, “Ko-Ko Lamps Aladdin”, which we’ll skip over for the time being as agreed, and Ko-Ko’s Harem Scarem (Fleischer/Paramount, 6/14/29). The latter film begins not in the usual animation studio office, but in a secret lair in which a mysterious turbaned potentate waits nervously to the ticking of a clock, remarking that a “boob” should be due there by now to deliver a rare treasure. Another bearded assistant in Arab garb pokes his head in, makes sure the coast is clear, then enters, carrying a small treasure chest, and bows before the potentate. “I searched all over the world and finally found it in America”, he states to the turbaned dignitary, leaving with him the chest and bowing a respectful farewell. The potentate eagerly opens the chest with anticipation, and removes from its darkened interior – KoKo’s and Fitz’s inkwell. Pulling out the stopper, the potentate peers inside, finding the cowering KoKo and Fitz nervously trembling inside the mouth of the bottle. Our heroes don’t wish to see what may happen next, and prostrate themselves across the top of the bottle, heads hanging down past the bottle’s lip. With fiendish delight, the potentate pulls out a small scimitar, places its blade behind KoKo’s and Fitz’s necks – and beheads them! He then replaces his weapon in its scabbard, and makes a hasty departure from the room. Now why did he have it in for our heroes and want to see them terminated? We may never know. However, the potentate has vastly underestimated the resilience of a cartoon star, as KoKo’s and Fitz’s heads rise of their own power from the ground, sprout small sets of legs from the neckline, and crawl their way back up the side of the treasure chest and bottle, to reconnect with their respective prone bodies, leaving the two laughing at the Arab as to how they fooled him.

Even in Arabia, they must have animated cartoons, as a couple of backgrounds with designs of ancient Arabian cities are spotted on the wall by KoKo and Fitz. They hop into one of the drawings to get back into their own element. Finding themselves in a bazaar, they pause to watch the magical feats of a Fakir. A snake rises from a pot to flute music from the Fakir – then, the entire pot levitates itself away and down the street. From under a sheet, the Fakir produces a foaming glass of beer – but makes it disappear again before a thirsty KoKo can even place a glove upon it. Then, the Fakir tosses the sheet over Fitz, mutters a few magic words, and causes Fitz to disappear. “Where’s my dog”, asks KoKo, and the Fakir tells him Fitz can be found in the next palace. KoKo gains entry to the palace gate when he looks for a key under the mat, triggering the gate to open like a mouth and swallow him inside. KoKo finds himself in an empty corridor, and peers through the keyhole of the nearest door. He receives an entrancing view of a harem dancer shimmying her stuff. A black palace guard appears, carrying a giant switchblade razor instead of a scimitar, and chases KoKo away from the keyhole. KoKo makes friends with the guard by producing a pair of dice, and out-shooting him in a game of craps. He makes inquiry whether the guard has seen a little dog, and is directed to the next room. Peering through a set of curtains, KoKo finds a Sultan inside with his harem – and, for reasons unknown, Fitz, masked in a veil, seated before the pillowed corner where the Sultan is seated. Finding hanging on a screen outside the room a set of full harem veils, KoKo dons them over his clown costume, and enters the palatial harem, posing as a dancer. His shakes and sways entice the Sultan into desiring a kiss, and KoKo actually delivers a smacker upon the Sultan’s lips – but then spits and wipes them off to get the bad taste out of his mouth. KoKo and Fitz reveal their identities to each other, and shift into full retreat mode for an escape. The Sultan attempts to pull a cord to ring for the palace guard – but yanks instead the long beard of his Vizer, who follows through with a dour look on his face, pulling the real bell cord himself. Not much more happens but some running, with Fitz converting himself into a living bicycle and KoKo steering by using Fitz’s ears as handlebars. The two reach the edge of the background on the wall, leap out of the paper, and back into their inkwell, concluding by making jeering faces at the Sultan, Vizer, and guard they have left behind.

More silents are missing from circulation. Walter Lantz’s “Dinky Doodle” series began with the title “The Magic Lamp” (putting itself out of this article according to its criteria), then followed up with “The Magic Carpet” (5/24/25). There was also “Dinky Doodle in Egypt” (4/8/26). Status of each of these episodes is unknown, although a viewer synopsis and a surviving movie poster give more hope for the survival of the latter title. Such synopsis reads:

“This Dinky Doodle cartoon begins with Dinky and Pete the Pup helping Walter Lantz get into a corset. Walter then puts on a Cleopatra outfit and leaves, presumably for a costume party. I certainly hope so. It gives Dinky nightmares and he dreams he is in Egypt.

“Cartoons, of course, are not a place where one hopes for accuracy of imagery, and even less so in a cartoon dream, so once we get past the Sphinx, camels, people walking sideways and mummies, we get into a trope from BEN-HUR, in which Dinky gets into a chariot race with a mummy. The result is competent, rather than inspired; gag set-ups are repeated for different punchlines instead of choosing the best one and coming up with another gag. The resulting cartoon is decent but no more.”

We can only hope these titles exist among the holdings of Tommy Stathes, as items for future restoration on his forthcoming “Cartoon Roots” blu-ray.

One of the lost Disney Oswald shorts for Universal was “Harem Scarem” (1/9/28), of which only a recent refilming of a short series of pencil drawings surviving in the Disney morgue is known to exist. All that is known of a synopsis is information we could have written in our sleep from our own imaginations: “Oswald is a tourist in a Moroccan cafe and falls in love with a dancing girl, who he inevitably has to rescue from the clutches of Pete.”

A detailed synopsis exists for the Bray Studios silhouette film, “Inbad the Sailor” (Silhouette Fantasies, 1/20/16 – C. Allen Gilbert, dir.), which film might itself also exist in some form, given a number of stills which have surfaced on the internet. Plot summary reads as follows:

“The story, which has the proper Arabian Nights flavor, depicts a sailor wrecked on a desert isle with only a monkey and a bottle of Tabasco sauce for comfort. But the writer produces the inevitable mystery in the shape of a genie’s chest, in which is found a wishing ring. The sailor has four wishes, one of which turns the monkey into a human companion a sort of man Friday, and another whisks the two off on a magic carpet to the Orient in search of adventure. As the two men tumble into the scene before the gates of Baghdad they are taken prisoners and are borne off to the Sultan who, learning of the wishing ring, decides to commute a sentence of death to a life of happiness and ease, providing they find a rare pearl stolen by a dragon in the mountain. As a reward the Sultan promises the sailor his daughter, a beautiful princess, for his wife. With such a prize in view, the sailor sets off with his companion to search for the pearl. They find the dragon, and just as he is about to attack them they pour the Tabasco sauce down his throat and he coughs up the pearl. As they see with the gem they look back and see the monster being consumed by fire from the burning condiment. Seeking the Sultan to claim the reward, the sailor discovers the supposed beautiful princess to be an unprepossessing old woman; so turning his companion back into a monkey, he sets sail on the magic carpet for New York, intending to dispose of the pearl. He takes it to a pawnshop, only to find the gem is a counterfeit and is worth only 30 cents.—Evening public ledger (December 11, 1915).”

The same cannot be said for the sequel, “Inbad the Sailor Gets Into Deep Water” (4/18/16), for which no synopsis nor stills appear to be available.

Mutt and Jeff are always among the casualty list, due to the mammoth number of their shorts for which no preservation copies appear to have been maintained. Among potential titles which might have included Arabian-themed adventures, given the duo’s frequent penchant for globe-trotting, were “Around the World in Nine Minutes” (1918), “West is East” (1919), and the nearly-certain “Around the Pyramids” (1922). There is one survivor – though its original elements may have disintegrated over the years. 1926’s Mummy O’Mine received a redrawn colorization under the retitling “Egyptian Daze” during the 1960’s. As redrawns go, it really isn’t all that bad. The original B&W seems to be nowhere to be found.

In this film, Mutt and Jeff commence an expedition to acquire the mummy of Mutt’s ancestor, King Mutt, and reap a fortune for its display. This film may, as many surviving Mutt and Jeff films demonstrate, constitute the first use of gags which became animation staples, about watering a camel. Jeff leads their camel to the banks of an oasis pool, where an old-fashioned hand-crack gasoline syphon-pump is installed at the water’s edge. Jeff has the camel take the pump’s hose-end in his mouth, then turns the crank to start the pumping. Instead of drawing fluid against a marked grid depicting number of gallons drawn, the grid meter gives a reading for number of days the water supply will hold out inside the camel! One gag seems unique to this film, not repeated to my knowledge by any later studios – Jeff overfills the camel, causing small fountains of water to spurt from the tops of each of the camel’s double-humps. A flat foot is quickly re-inflated with an air hose. Then Mutt cranks up the camel’s tail like the engine of an old flivver. The tail transforms from a crank to a staircase, for Mutt and Jeff to climb aboard. Then away the duo go astride the camel, the beast’s humps popping up and down like engine cylinders. (We’ll see nearly all of these automotive gags reused years later, in Ub Iwerks’ “Ali Baba” and Max Fleischer’s “Popeye Meets Ali Baba’s 40 Thieves”.)

Our heroes arrive at a pyramid guarded by a quartet of Egyptian guards. To sneak in closer, Mutt grabs up some local palm frond foliage from an oasis, and holds it up above himself and the camel, in the lamest effort to disguise them all as a palm tree. Jeff nervously hops down when they are within range, and draws a bead with his trusty sling-shot upon the rear end of the nearest guard (which he envisions in mind’s view as a bulls-eye target). The surprised guard looks around upon impact, and, spotting the gun muzzle of the next guard facing his way, figures someone took a stray shot at him. The two guards begin a verbal altercation, while Jeff takes aim upon the rear of a third guard (swaying to look to Jeff like a pendulum-swinging target in a shooting gallery). Another hit, and another guard joins the altercation, which develops into a fight cloud. The fourth guard comes around from the other side of the pyramid, and, even though not shot upon, figures he ought to join the rest of his buddies, and dives right into the fight cloud too. The pyramid entrance is thus left unattended, and our heroes quickly take the opportunity to slip inside.

Several sarcophagus cases line the walls of the inner tomb. They contain some surprises. The first is opened by Jeff, only to release a springing jack-in-the-box head into his face. A second case reveals a live female cat in Egyptian dancer garb, who performs a short shimmy-dance for the boys, then exits, followed by about six Egyptian kittens. Finally, a case with a mummy inside is located. For reasons known only to the workings of cartoon brains, the boys decide someone should cover, to leave the corridor looking unaltered in case any guard should happen by – at least long enough until one of them can manage an escape from the tomb with the real mummy. So Jeff wraps Mutt up entirely in mummy wrappings (one of the few places where a severe recurring animation error occurs in the color redrawing – the same positioning of bandages re-appearing four times in the sequence), and places Mutt inside the mummy case. Jeff waits just inside the tomb entrance until one of the guards enters on patrol, then conks out the guard with a club blow. Jeff steals the guard’s robes, then conceals himself and the mummy within the one outfit much too large to fit them, and tries to saunter his way out the door as one of the security squad. His small height and poor sense of balance cause the costumed figure to fold and bend in ways that normal human anatomy would not support, leaving the other guards rubbing their eyes in disbelief.

Then, the robe falls from Jeff’s shoulders, revealing both him and his carried bundle. One guard goes chasing after Jeff, while others run inside the tomb, just to check on the mummy case and be sure their eyes were not just playing tricks on them. To their surprise and confusion, they find the mummy case still filled – but with Mutt. They nearly walk away bamboozled as if nothing happened, until Mutt sneezes, blowing his cover. The gift-wrapped Mutt slithers out of the room like a high-speed worm. Jeff meanwhile is still being pursued by the lone guard outside. Though Jeff is supposed to be carrying the genuine dead mummy, a shot from the guard’s gun gives the mummy plenty of incentive to spring to life, running ahead at a faster pace than Jeff. Jeff also performs some “log rolling” maneuvers atop the rolling mummy, engages in a game of teeter-totter with the guard aboard the barrel of the guard’s long rifle with the mummy serving as a fulcrum, and briefly loses his head when a shot from the guard hits its mark. Mutt is still trying to outdistance his own pursuers, and shapes himself into a loop, now rolling along like a tire, and gaining speed as he rolls down a steep slope. At the bottom of the hill stands Jeff, minus his mummy, which he has left behind in the sand while negotiating a sharp turn – with the third guard about to pounce upon him for the kill. Mutt rolls right into the guard, knocking him unconscious. Seeing the mummy-wrapped figure, Jeff leaps with joy, believing the real mummy has somehow rolled back to him. Again for reasons making no logical sense, Jeff chooses to tug at the mummy wrappings to unwrap the bundle, and have a look at Mutt’s ancestor (who could easily disintegrate into powder at being exposed to air and sunlight). Instead, he finds only the real Mutt, spinning around like a top, and collapsing from dizziness upon the sand. The frustrated Jeff falls into a matching faint atop him, and we iris out.

• The surviving colorized version of “Mummy O’Mine” is on You Tube.

Remote chance of a silent Krazy Kat entry fitting our subject comes from the title, “The Ghost Fakir” (Winkler, 2/1/26), another film presumed lost. Also “East is Best” (9/22/26).

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 9/23/26) – Well, here’s one of those instances where reference to Aladdin is unavoidable – as this first effort to inaugurate the animated feature is something of a split-bill, with about half of its footage devoted to a partial retelling of Aladdin. But it turns out there’s another tale entwined with it – that of Achmed, the brother of the very Princess which Aladdin chose to seek. Son of the Caliph, he chooses to stand up to the will of the powerful “African Sorcerer” who also seeks the hand of his sister (apparently before Aladdin came on the scene). The Sorcerer has appeared before the Caliph during the midst of the celebration of the Caliph’s birthday, showing off a magical flying horse he has conjured up. The Caliph wants to purchase the fine steed, but the Sorcerer refuses any offer of gold. The Caliph, desperate to acquire the unobtainable animal, offers the Sorcerer his choice of any of the royal treasures. The Sorcerer chooses the princess, much to the Caliph’s dismay, having given his word. Only Achmed refuses to allow his sister to be taken by such trickery. The Sorcerer tries to pacify Achmed by demonstrating how fine a treasure the Caliph himself will be receiving in the animal, offering Achmed the chance for a ride. The Sorcerer coaxes Achmed to touch a plume protruding from the horse’s head – the magic control he has given the mythical creature to prompt it to rise into the air. He does not tell Achmed that another lever has been installed in the horse’s back, just above his tail, which is the only way to make him go down. Thus, Achmed rises and rises, above the clouds, and disappears. This gets rid of Achmed, but not the wrath of the Caliph, for whom this act means all deals are off. Instead of getting the princess, the Sorcerer is thrown into a dungeon. For the moment, the Sorcerer bides his time in chains, plotting his next moves.

After traveling a great many leagues into the sky, and nearly to the stars, Achmed, after desperate attempts to tug the horse’s head plume ever which way, finally stumbles upon gripping the small lever in the horse’s back. The descent begins, and Achmed lands on a porch of a palace in the far-off magical land of Waq Waq – a spirit realm. After a humorous encounter with a group of five slave girls assigned to assist the kingdom’s princess (who nearly tear each other apart in rivalry for Achmed’s kisses), Achmed flees the palace to escape the lovesick girls, piloting his steed to a woodland area nearby. There (in a definitely pre-code moment suggesting in silhouette natural nudity), the kingdom’s princess, Peri Banu, arrives in a flying cloak made of bird feathers, and removes it to bathe in a secluded pool. Achmed watches from the concealment of some foliage near the lake’s edge, and instantly falls in love at first sight. He is discovered by two of the princess’s attendants, who, instead of defending the princess, turn and flee, leaving the princess alone and unprotected.

Achmed has cleverly managed to seize the discarded feather cloak, leaving the princess both possibly without covering, as well as without means of flying away. She begs for the cloak back, and Achmed eventually complies, only after coaxing her with compliments to realize he means her no harm, stating that he is hers to command, and professing his desire for her to return with him to his palace and be his wife. As the princess regains her fine feathers, she is reluctant to use them for escape, attaining feelings for the suitor she did not expect to occur. She points out her duties to the spirit realm, and that were she to leave, the principal spirits of her world (the Djinns and Afreets) would no doubt seek revenge. But Achmed assures her that his kingdom would be too far away for them to assert their powers, and the princess agrees to follow Achmed.

Meanwhile, the Sorcerer has decided to check on the fate of Achmed, and conjures between his hands the equivalent of a crystal-gazer window, showing Achmed with Princess Peri. He wishes to make sure that Achmed will remain stranded in the spirit world, and sees possibilities for putting Princess Peri in a position to suit his own purposes. So, he easily compresses his limbs to slip out of the dungeon chains, transforms into a bat, and flies with the speed of light to the spirit world. Once there, he engages in another feat of shape-shifting, transforming into a kangaroo. Appearing before the couple, he nabs away the princess’s feather cloak. (Now we really hope the Princess might by now be wearing something underneath.) The kangaroo/sorcerer leads Achmed on a merry chase, luring him to a canyon, and causing him to fall in. Transforming back to human form, he returns to the Princess, claiming to be a messenger set by Achmed, with a present of a new regal cloak to replace the feathered one (is he again getting an eyeful?), and instructions to accompany him to Achmed by means of the flying horse. Instead, the sorcerer spirits Princess Pari away, to the palace of the Emperor of China, and quickly sells her to the Emperor for a fortune in gold.

It apparently takes a while for Achmed to escape the canyon. When he does, the princess is long gone. Achmed despairs and weeps bitterly. But the Sorcerer, although already rich, is not through seeing to it that Achmed’s life will end in misery. He returns again, backed up by a swarm of flying pinwheel-style creatures who seize up Achmed like the flying monkeys out of “The Wizard of Oz”, and fly him to the pinnacle of a small active volcano, temporarily not gushing but imminent to do so amidst a volcanic lava field. The Sorcerer has Achmed placed with his back inserted in the small mouth of the volcanic crater, with a boulder placed upon his chest to pin Achmed in place until the eruption. The Sorcerer then departs back to Baghdad, now to seek revenge on his other adversary, the Caliph.

Enter a new character – an overweight, magical Ogress who looks like she might have stepped out of the pages of Shrek. She has many magical powers of her own, and rules this small volcanic area of the spirit world. Controlling a squadron of black birds, she observes the strange intruder resting within her “fire-mountain”, and commands her birds to retrieve him to her – just before the crater blows its top. The Ogress and Achmed don’t at first know what to make of one another, but word slips from Achmed’s lips that the Sorcerer put him there. Now, Achmed is okay with the Ogress – anyone who’s an enemy of the Sorcerer is a friend of hers, as she has some old scores to settle with the Sorcerer herself from past encounters. Achmed inquires as to the princess’s whereabouts, and the all-knowing Ogress tells him of the doings in the Emperor’s palace, where the Emperor, unable himself to charm the distraught princess to be his own, leaves it to his dwarf Royal Assistant to decide whether to put her to death, or take her for a bride himself. The dwarf expresses preference for a wedding, and one is ordered post haste. Achmed seeks the assistance of the Ogress to rescue his beloved. From a crater which she opens in the earth, the Ogress summons a special suit of armor, sword, bow and arrow (presumably fireproof), and presents them to Achmed, informing him that these weapons prevail against all magic. She then takes Ahmed to the top of one of the exploding volcanos, and, using her magic, is able to walk upon the volcanic steam escaping from the mountain, letting the cloud spread, to float them in the stratosphere to the palace of the Emperor.

Things take a bit of a disregard for civil and religious law, as a wedding does indeed appear to take place in the Chinese palace, the emperor presiding over tying ceremonial rope knots around the wrists of the bride and bridegroom. But there is no time for consummation, and it appears that Achmed and Princess Pari could care less that she is legally wedded when he shows up for a romantic reunion in her bridal chamber, sharing several passionate kisses. However, it’s not going to be a simple matter of returning to Baghdad by some magic means. The Djinns and Afreets of the spirit world have been seeking out Princess Pari ever since she left for the mortal realm, and choose this inopportune moment to finally catch up with her. Like Achmed at the hands of the Sorcerer’s minions, the princess is “spirited” away into the sky, back to her own world. With the Ogress’s help, Achmed follows, but finds even a magic-proof armor won’t get him past the entrance to a mountain chamber, protected by a spell, where the Princess has been taken for punishment for betraying her subjects. A disembodied voice informs Achmed that no mortal may pass into the chamber unless he controls the wonderful magic lamp. What more of a cue could we ask for to fold herein the Aladdin story.

Achmed finds himself in a chance meeting with Aladdin, when he spots the boy outside the same guarded entrance, being attacked by a six-armed tree monster. (Something about this sequence looks like it stepped right out of a Ray Harryhausen feature.) A shot from Achmed’s enchanted bow does in the ferocious creature, and Aladdin gives thanks and explains his presence there. Trouble is, as his story progresses, we find that he is no longer in possession of the magic lamp. The usual scenario plays out in flashback (though perhaps in its first dramatic portrayal ever in animated form), as Aladdin, also smitten with the other princess who is Achmed’s sister, is coaxed by, of all people, the same Sorcerer who’s been bothering Achmed, to attempt to retrieve the lamp from a subterranean cave, on the pretext that it is the service requested in return for a way to win the princess’s heart. As usual, Aladdin does not give up the lamp at the mouth of the cave, demanding to be let out first, and the Sorcerer, out of spite, seals him in, claiming he has other ways to get the lamp, while Aladdin can merely perish. (Why exactly does the Sorcerer now want the lamp? Does he still covet the Caliph’s daughter? Or merely want revenge upon the Caliph?) Anyway, the genie makes a brief onscreen appearance to get Aladdin out of the cave, then is only suggested by light flashes from time to time as other wishes are fulfilled, to shower the princess with gifts from suitor Aladdin, and construct a palace greater than that of the Caliph overnight and right next door, just for her. The Sorcerer doesn’t appear to get wise to who and where Aladdin is until after the Caliph consents to a wedding, putting the Caliph’s daughter out of the Sorcerer’s emotional reach. But, with little in the way of explanation, one day, the Caliph’s daughter, the new palace, and the lamp all disappear. Somehow, the Sorcerer has discovered Aladdin’s ruse, stolen the lamp, and made off with everything. He seems to consider this suitable revenge upon the Caliph and Aladdin, taking no further action with the lamp. The Caliph, however, knowing nothing of the Sorcerer’s actions, places the blame upon Aladdin, causing the youth to flee for his life, making an escape in a small boat, out to the open sea. After an unknown number of days adrift, Aladdin washes up on the shores of the spirit realm – and, this is where we found him when he came in.

So, what’s left to do? Only one person to turn to in a crisis like this – the Ogress. Achmed and Aladdin implore her that if she has any control left through her magic powers, summon the Sorcerer to this realm, and attempt to do him in. The Ogress agrees to try. Amidst circular beams of light and double-exposure special effects, the Ogress works her spell – and the surprised Sorcerer appears, recognizing at once the face of an old familiar foe. What follows may be a revelation to die-hard Disney fans, as an all out “wizards’ duel” ensues, the combatants battling by shape-shifting from the form of one type of creature to another. It is instantly recognizable as a direct and highly-likely inspiration for the battle of Merlin and Mad Madam Mim in “The Sword in the Stone” (original 1938 version). Did T.H. White know of the Achmed film? Even if he independently created the book story, there’s little doubt the Disney animation team was well aware of this film sequence, and likely took some ideas from this presentation for their own storyboards. Ultimately, the Ogress gets in the final blow, and the Sorcerer is defeated and deceased – conveniently with the magic lamp still on him. The Ogress commands the lamp to open the gateway for Achmed to enter for the rescue of Princess Pari. Her execution is halted in the nick of time, but the spirits release a stampede of their black legion from the mountaintop to rush Achmed. The Ogress counters with another wish upon the lamp, producing an army of white spirits, whose efforts equally neutralize the black army. The vengeful black spirits are finally routed by the combined forces of Achmed and the white army, and retreat back inside the mountain, as Achmed emerges with Princess Pari in his arms, safe, sound, and free to do as she pleases. Another use of the lamp produces Aladdin’s floating palace, emerging out of nowhere from the clouds, with Achmed’s sister still safe and sound inside. Both reunited couples, along with the lamp, are set on a final journey out of the spirit world by the Ogress, who wishes them all the best of good fortune, back in their normal mortal existence. The Caliph is not only overjoyed at the return of Aladdin and the Caliph’s daughter, forgiving all to Aladdin, but amazed and surprised at the return of his long-lost son, together with his own charming bride-to-be. All ends on a happy note, with the learned men from the top of the minarets calling the kingdom to prayer, giving thanks to Allah for the kingdom’s good fortune.

An amazing amount of plot for a 1926 animated film to cram in within just over an hour. Although the silent format and the generally-dark visual values of a silhouette-animation film make the entire affair a little of an endurance test to get through in one sitting, Lotte’s films always surprise in their attention to detail, meticulous character craftsmanship, and, particularly in this instance, in tackling its subject matter with the same dramatic flair of a comparable live-action feature. Aside from being silent, this feels nothing like 1926 animation, and represents a whole new approach that even today seems startlingly contemporary. The writing of this column resulted in my first actual viewing of this mini-epic I’d heard so much about over the years. I cannot in any manner state that I was at all disappointed. And the wizards’ duel is, as with its Disney counterpart, pretty much worth the price of admission. Indeed, a milestone.

The version of the film embedded below, although in black and white instead of the restored color-tinted version, is the only version I could locate in English without subtitling or overdubbed narration. If you prefer to see the tint, other versions are available on Youtube (though beware of those aggravating commercial breaks).

The synchronized sounds of Arabian music make the big screen, next time.