After the success of "Sinbad the Sailor" Maureen O'Hara was ready to play another princess of Arabia in 49 and along came this story of Bagdad that suited her perfectly. She plays Princess Marjan of the Beduins but there is nothing tribal about her. The first time we see her she is dressed like an English Victorian lady riding in the desert with an overdressed Vincent Price as Pacha Ali Nadim, who is of course the EVIL character that slaps all his subordinates on a regular basis and protects the Black raiders, a bandit club that is as endemic to these movies as the absurd amounts of early polyester silks and gilt-costume jewelry on the women, always covered by perfectly transparent veils.Princess Marjan has been studying in London, though we are never told what. When she arrives at the caravansary, the man in charge assumes she is English, but she tells him she is an Arabian Princess, you can't blame the man, her flowing mane of red hair is not particularly an Arabian trait and neither is her ivory skin. She proceeds to go on a shopping spree for native garb, which is Hollywood interpretations of what they thought Arabian women should wear, and translates as a Maureen, because there is no other way to describe the costume: weird shoulder treatments, occasionally with flounces, sometimes attached to an impossibly small vest, heavily embroidered, sometimes to a camisole that at the waist flairs into a half- train or baggy pants, sometimes both. The total effect is sometimes late Renaissance as interpreted by cookie boxes that have a medallion with a 'lady' from 'Verona' or 'Florence' but are more readily found in real life at wedding receptions in Newark. Princess Marjan is trying to put her tribe back on its feet after her father's assassination, she is trying to talk to the Emir, persuade the Pasha, and seduce a handsome Prince who one minute is a camel driver and the next a rich merchant from Cairo spewing precious stones at her dinner table on a horrid night that the Pasha imposes himself on her to have dinner at the one and only Western cuisine restaurant in Bagdad, "I Franghi" (or something like that). The restaurant has entertainment also, which consists of dancing girls. This gives Princess Marjan the brilliant idea of adding extra income to her enterprise by singing in this place which is a concoction of all the 'elegant French restaurants" outside of Paris by way of Wyoming. No sooner was this flash of genius stricken than she glides from the table like a panther in love and sashays around the place singing ballads. This is the best moment of the film, and it could go on Broadway anytime as a revival with a few extra tunes. She has an amazingly good Broadway voice and when she stops you want to hear another one. You will, but it will take a while. The plot thickens with so many useless details I can not record them accurately, except that at one point Princess Marjan appears dressed in gypsy garb with her friends at the enemy camp and the movie hits another high point. This Princess can look like a sassy gypsy, tell a fortune with grace flashing that ultra-Colgate smile that probably introduced toothpaste to the Bedouins right there, poison a soup, flirt at a battalion of women-hungry Arabs and she still goes away unscathed and virginal, ready for her close-up with her hero-prince and a happy ending. Now that's ENTERTAINMENT. This movie can also team up with either "Sinbad the Sailor" (1947) or "Flame of Araby" (1951) for an excellent double feature that will leave you floating in your own magic carpet of Arabian Technicolor dreams.

As other posters note, the plot of Bagdad is incoherent, though its momentum and the good-bad IDs are always clear. It's one of those odd paste-jewelry gems of the mid-century Hollywood studios. Overall the prevailing aesthetic is camp, especially given the outrageousness of Maureen O'Hara as a red-haired, green-eyed, candle-cheeked Bedouin princess and the languid Swede Paul Hibschmud / Christian in the Valentino slot.But if Bagdad is campy junk, it's not exactly cheap junk. The color is touching, as are the efficiently managed sets. If you look closely at the California desert shots, you'll see many a rock outcropping used in Western chases with cowboys.Bagdad is not a Western, though, but an "Eastern." As another poster noted, Maria Montez was the icon of this minor movement in Hollywood genre films. As with other such potboilers, one of the pleasures is the precise performance of the character actors, e. g. John Sutton as the villain and whoever plays the sentimental role of the old retainer to the princess's father.Plenty of credit to O'Hara and Price for carrying the film. The scenario has so many lurches and fillers that you see something in these actors beyond mere talent, though both have plenty. Beyond talent, they're both troopers who never flinch when the script double-clutches--they brave every scene through, holding up the pretense, and O'Hara's song-and-dance performances give some scenes a surprising robustness.Given the plot's weaknesses, I doubt if this movie is worth sitting down for 90 minutes at one stretch. But I taped it off a cable channel and watched about 10 minutes at a time. Virtually every 10-minute episode featured a song or dance, a scene of intrigue, and luminous backdrops with well-staged action. Obviously a viewer must have a predisposition to pure escapism. What else is Hollywood for? Recommended on those terms.

"Bagdadª is a terrible adventure film. Actually it doesn't catch your attention at all. The point is that not even kids who usually enjoy this sort of colorful desert action pieces, could be satisfied with this one. In fact you don't even care about how things will come out (tough you can guess easily).You also wonder how a respected actress like Maureen O'Hara could ever enter this thing; in fact if she wasn't in this film there would be definitely nothing to see (my 3 points rank are just for her undeniable beauty). Vincent Price enjoys himself as the villain but he doesn't add much to his brilliant gallery here.Just if you want to see gorgeous Maureen singing and dancing the arab way.

A memorable film from several points. The color was terrific; the songs that Maureen O'Hara trilled had style; the costumes were overdone; the acting and dialogue, with all those "thee's" and "thou's" were unbelievable. Maureen must have been in Elizabethan England before returning to Bagdad. I really think the whole crew, including writers, must have had a hilarious time making this screwy movie. It is so bad, it is good.