We open on a damsel in distress, staked out in front of hungry leopard. Enter our Arabian hero, stage right. Working his kung-fu on the guards, he then -- with only one deathly chop! -- takes out the leopard, and then serenades the girl while freeing her...And the end credits roll.

The End. 

What. That’s it?

No, not so fast. It’s really just the world premiere of Johnny Tyrone’s latest movie epic -- Sands of the Desert (which is a much better title than Harum Scarum). At the request of the American government, Tyrone (Elvis Aron Presley) held the premiere in Abulstan to help improve U.S. relations with the Middle Eastern country. The American Ambassador thanks everyone for attending, and asks Johnny to sing a song, which he gladly does. (I was kind of hoping for his version of "Ahab the Arab" but I was skunked again.) After the number, the Ambassador introduces Johnny to Prince Dragna (Michael Ansara), and his companion Aishah (Fran Jeffries). Dragna invites him to the secluded kingdom of Lunacan that's beyond the Mountains of the Moon (and just left of the Burning Bush). With the Ambassador’s urging, Johnny accepts.

After a hard days travel, they make camp for the night where Aishah tells Johnny that no westerner has ever entered Lunacan, and it will be like stepping back 2000 years in time. After Dragna retires to his tent, Aishah starts putting the moves on Johnny, and while she gives him a cup of wine, we notice that several black-robed figures are closing in on the camp (triggering our "uh-oh" radar, and if you look real close, a couple of them look very familiar.) But the wine is drugged, and when Johnny passes out, Aishah orders the bandits to gather him up, and they haul him off.

Johnny wakes up in the Garden of Pleasure, surrounded by a harem of beautiful women. He sings to them about mirages coming to life, and then asks what happened. His answer comes quickly as several thugs burst in, who then drag him before Sinan -- the King of the Assassins (Theo Maruse). Aishah is there, too, and we finally get the scoop as to what’s going on: It appears the natives are a little confused and think Johnny really is a super-assassin with the hands of death, like in his movies. Sinan has kidnapped him to assassinate an "important figure" in Lunacan. He offers a lot of money, but Johnny says his kung-fu is used for self-defense only and refuses. And after a quick skirmish with guards, he is overwhelmed and Sinan orders them to persuade the American to see things his way. Meanwhile, Dragna returns to the Royal Palace in Lunacan and reports to Toranshah, his brother, the King, that his caravan was raided and Johnny Tyrone was kidnapped by the Assassins. Fearing that Sinan is up to something, he encourages his brother to hide out until the danger is past. Toranshah (Phillip Reed) agrees, and will retreat to the summer palace as soon as the Fast of Ramadan is over -- but, for her safety, sends his daughter Shalimar (Mary Ann Mobley) right away.

Johnny awakens in the harem again. As one of the girls treats his back where he was whipped, from out nowhere, out pops Zacha -- con man, coward and comedy relief. Asking for his help to escape, Zacha (Jay Novello) only agrees after Johnny promises an ample enough reward to overcompensate for his inherent cowardice. That night, during the changing of the guards, they escape the compound, but since Johnny refused to kill the guard, the alarm is sounded and the Assassins come after them. Zacha says to meet him at the Pool of Omar, and they split up. -- Now how the heck is he supposed to know where that is? Eluding the guards by scaling a castle wall, Johnny falls into a pond on the other side. When he surfaces, Shalimar greets him from a floating gazebo. Johnny had the good fortune of climbing into the royal summer palace, but for some reason, Shalimar hides her royal heritage and tells Johnny she’s just a slave girl. Telling his sob story of how some dope named Sinan kidnapped him, Shalimar is smitten by the American and agrees to take him to the Pool of Omar. Turns out the feeling is mutual because Johnny’s already offering to take her back to Hollywood with him. Shalimar thinks they might be able to convince her "master" to let her go to America with him.

By the time they reach the Pool, he’s swooning her with a song, and then they kiss -- extendedly. When they come up for air, she asks why did Sinan kidnapped him. He says they wanted him to kill an "important figure" in Lunacan. Shalimar automatically assumes this to be her father, panics, takes the horses, and rides off leaving him behind, Dumbfounded, Johnny waits for Zacha who eventually shows up. The thief says there are only two passages out of Lunacan, and the Assassins will be watching both of them, so his only chance of getting out is to join his troupe of dancers and musicians and disguise himself as a performer. All he has to do is pass an audition...Meanwhile, Shalimar makes it back to the palace and warns her father about what Johnny said. The King sends Dragna and the royal guard to roust out the Assassins...When Zacha shows Johnny his troupe, we get an extended belly-dancing sequence as his three dancers shake their booty and tambourines. Zacha reveals they’re mostly a distraction, so his midget Baba (Billy Barty!) can sneak among the crowd and pick some pockets. Wasting no time, Johnny takes up a tambourine and introduces Lunacan to a little rock-n-roll. The crowd is pretty receptive until someone catches Baba stealing a coin sack, and then all hell breaks loose. 

The troupe splits up, and Johnny has to kung-fu his way through the kasbah. Getting some help from a couple of street urchins with slingshots, Zacha rounds them all up and they retreat into his secret lair in the Palace of Jackals. The urchins are Zacha's children -- orphans that he took in. Johnny's pleased to meet them, but all he really wants is to find Shalimar and get the heck out of Lunacan. The whole troupe begs Johnny to take them back to America. The little orphan girl swears she can pull her own weight, and when she starts to do the hully-gully, Johnny gets such a big kick out of it he starts serenading her. (She’s a little young there, E.) After a wild night of singing and dancing, the gang hits the sack. But the evil Aishah wakes Johnny up, and he discovers the place filled with Assassins. Thinking Zacha has sold him out, she reveals they’ve been following him since his escape. Aishah then says he must obey Sinan, and kill the King, or the two orphans will die.

Meanwhile, at the palace, Shalimar is dreaming of Johnny, and as his reflection sings to her from her bathtub, her handmaiden enters and comments she has the look of love about her. Confessing her love for the American, Shalimar fears she will never see him again. He doesn’t even know she’s a princess because, if he did, they never would have gotten past first base. (So that’s why she never told him.) The royal guard returns empty handed, and the Captain tells the King that someone must have tipped the Assassins off, meaning there's a traitor in the palace, so they’ll have to be double careful. Hey -- Anybody seen Dragna?

The celebration marking the end of the Feast of Ramadan has arrived, and a familiar dance troupe is entertaining the Royal Court. Hiding under a hooded cloak, Johnny lurks in the background. (Elvis was a Jedi?) Zacha whines he must kill the King, or they’re all dead. But when Johnny approaches the King, Shalimar recognizes him and screams a warning. Johnny says he only wants to talk, but the entire troupe is seized and thrown in the dungeon. Lucky for them, the guards overlooked Baba, and while the little guy engineers their escape from the outside, Johnny sings the blues from inside his cell. He’s worried about the kids, but Zacha warns him to worry about the Death of a Thousand Cuts that awaits him for trying to kill the King. They here someone opening the door, and Johnny leaps into position. Ready to strike, when the door opens, he swings at the guard but just swipes at air where a head should be, corkscrewing himself. He swung right over the top of Baba who took out all the guards, so they’re free. (And that was the film funniest scene.) While the others escape, Johnny and Baba sneak back into the palace to talk to the King. Finding him in Shalimar’s room, where she’s blubbering over her American boyfriend who tried to kill her dad, Johnny jumps in and begs to explain. He tells them how Sinan is holding the kids hostage at the Palace of the Jackals, and unless he kills the King, they’ll be killed instead. The King agrees to help, but first they must expose the traitor. So they set a plan in to motion...

The next morning, the alarm sounds and the captain of the guard reports to Dragna that the King is missing, and his royal bed is torn apart and covered in blood. Dragna orders him to search the city. As Johnny, Shalimar, Baba and the King sneak into the Palace of the Jackals, the Assassins have already beaten them there and recaptured the entire troupe. They secretly watch as Sinan receives word that the King is dead and demands payment by the man who hired him. And it isn't much of a surprise when Dragna comes forward and pays him for services rendered. (I knew it. I knew it. I knew it.) Sinan then pulls a double-cross, informing Dragna that he will only be a puppet ruler and he will be the one calling the shots -- it seems Sinan's made a deal with an oil company to come and drill into Lunacan’s untapped oil supplies. And if Dragna refuses, they will kill him. So he agrees, and Aishah takes him back to the palace. Since Zacha's people know too much to live, Sinan orders his men to kill them all. Johnny comes to the rescue and gets the head assassin in a chokehold, and orders Sinan to call off his men or he'll snap his neck. The villain capitulates, but warns they’ll never make it to the safety of the palace alive.

Zacha assures them that he has plenty of friends and relatives who will fight for the King (for the right price.) They throw Sinan into a cart and roll out into the dark streets of Lunacan. Using a variety of signals, Zacha rousts out his army of thieves. They make their way into the main square and stake Sinan out, and when he calls for his men, the Assassins pour into the square and a nasty street fight erupts. Johnny tells the King to take cover, but he refuses, and taking up his scimitar, heads off to the palace to find the treacherous Dragna. The massive fight has all the deadly drama of an old Keystone Cop short -- until one of Sinan’s guards takes an arrow in the gut. He spasms, and pulls the trigger on the machine gun he’s holding, which swings around and blasts Sinan dead. Without their leader, the other Assassins are routed and victory belongs to the good guys. Marshaling their forces, they head to the palace to help the King. But when they break into his throne room, they find him and Dragna locked in a deadly game of -- chess? (The hell?) The King tells Johnny that even though Dragna is a traitor, he’s still his brother, so he can’t kill him. He and Aishah will be banished to the nether-lands, and Lunacan will open official diplomatic channels with the U.S. of A.

Again. The hell?

In belated honor of the king of rock and roll's birthday on January 8th, I decided to look at his less than stellar film career. And since all efforts to track down a copy of Tickle Me or Change of Habit failed abysmally, I had to settle on Elvis’s Arabian Ka-Niggets adventure -- Harum Scarum.

It’s almost a forgotten fact, but from 1960 until his comeback special in 1968, Elvis Presley never performed live or go out on tour -- at all! After Elvis got out of the army in 1960, his music career took a back seat to his film career. His first film back was, appropriately enough, G.I. Blues. Unfortunately, while Elvis was making films like this and Kissing Cousins, the four lads from Liverpool took over the pop charts. (And to that I give a big old raspberry. THHHHBBBBTTTTTH!)

The film's soundtrack was recorded before filming even began. When I calculated it out, there's a song approximately every 7.2 minutes, and they're about as forgettable as the film itself. Shot on an old Cecile B. Demille set, they only had 15 days to complete filming. It’s said that when Colonel Tom took a look at the finished film, and was so disgusted by it, he told the studio heads that they’d better start trying a little harder. I don't buy that -- no way would the Colonel make waves with this money-making machine, and it wouldn't have mattered because no one was listening.

If you haven’t figured it out already, I’m a huge fan of Elvis -- but I’m not above taking shots at him. Sure his films were terrible, but such is the life of a fanatic. If Elvis is in it. I’ll watch it. No matter how hard I want to poke my eyes out by the closing credits. It’s easy to make fun and to poke fun at them and him. And I’m as guilty as the next party, and bad films are what this site is all about and he made plenty of them. But it is kind of sad when I watch Johnny Tyrone karate chopping a leopard, and realize it’s the same rockabilly cat who blistered the music world in the '50s. And when he sings songs about clams in Clambake, I get depressed because it's the same guy who can reduce me to a blithering idiot whenever I hear him tear through the "American Trilogy." 

*sigh*

Posted: 01/18/02. Copy and paste at your own legal risk.

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