Current director Paul Thomas ties with Silvera for silliest appearance, due to a colorfully gaudy crown 'n' cape combo, as a spoiled prince capable of traveling through time and space by way of magic horse, an ability he abuses for amorous exploits only with sleeping geisha Mai Lin and toothsome 1920s tart Laura Lazare in a rare forgettable turn from her concise carnal career. Lysa Thatcher and Tigr are perfectly cast as a pair of allegedly underage sisters Nicole trots out for her tireless paramour's second and final request. This extended episode obtains most of its narrative thrust through voice-over, dashing all hopes of a Rex Ingram style sorcerer making even the most fleeting of appearances, but the tantalizing tension between Noir's sophisticated seductress and the oafish but very virile Martin mounts nicely and I'm sure you can probably come up with a pun of your own to complete that sentence. Prior to taking his life, the genie grants him two wishes. His luck's about to change, sort of, when he catches a genie in a bottle in his fishing nets.
#1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS STORIES ARE ADULT MOVIE#
Following Lisa's tempestuous threesome with Hersch and a faintly ridiculous Joey Silvera, who kicks off pornographic proceedings by lewdly gyrating to a characteristically chintzy "Ronny Romanovitch" tune, the movie settles into meandering mode as Annette spins her first yarn - incidentally, also the only one to pretty much play out in full - of an unfortunate fisherman (solemnly played by the fastest aging guy in porn, Jon Martin, just compare his appearances at the decade's start and fade) who passes the mansion of beautiful noblewoman Nicole Noir every day on his way to work. Suffice it to say that neither of them was ever heard from again. The Sultan's cruel streak came into being as he unwittingly uncovered a plot by his faithless spouse (an eye-popping turn by voluptuous Lisa DeLeeuw, lifted all too soon from a narrative that could really use her liveliness) and his army's general Herschel Savage to overthrow his reign. Also lifted off the written page is the framing device of having crafty concubine Sheherazade (Annette Haven in the role she was born to play) entertain Sultan John Leslie with nocturnal tales filled with intrigue and intimacy, ending each with a cliffhanger as the sun appears in an attempt to steer clear of her master's heinous habit of having last night's companion executed at dawn. Retaining the correct title (well, almost anyway) of a book far more renowned than actually read, A THOUSAND AND ONE EROTIC NIGHTS should do little to dispel that slightly erroneous notion. Albeit largely non-erotic in nature, The Arabian Nights has acquired a reputation, along with Boccaccio's Decameron and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, as a titillating tome, presumably as a direct result of Pasolini's tackling of all three for his magnificent Trilogy of Life at the dawn of the '70s, cleverly concentrating on some of the juicier passages, sending feverish adolescents of all ages scurrying back to their high school reading assignments to revisit the "good bits" they inexplicably missed the first time around. Unfortunately, the sluggish pace - inspired, perhaps, by ill-advised reverence to its lofty literary source - also makes it their most stilted.
Serving as a testimony to the genre's good health circa 1982, their adult adaptation from some of the lesser known tales from the compendium of folk tales from the Middle East commonly referred to as The Arabian Nights proves the most lavish of their sexual spectacles.
Part of the demographic themselves, the Browns were an exception, producing a batch of increasingly impressive technical merit over the ten year period between 1975's CHINA GIRL and their 1986 DREAMGIRLS with a few early '90s efforts tagged on as a coda. The reality of most of these well-intentioned attempts was that, rather than satisfy male and female viewers alike, their frequently clueless approach ended up pleasing no one.
Reluctant to revisit their explicit exploits to this day, team in life as well as labor of Edwin and Summer Brown crafted several of the more successful attempts at the so-called "couples film", that mythical beast born to break down barriers between the sexes.