NOT BEFORE THE ELECTION, PLEASE

The Blessèd Reverend Repulski was thunderstruck by the Hollywood movie musical "Kismet" on The Movie Channel yesterday. "I actually saw this thing at the Loew's Valencia, in 1955," he recalls. "But I had no idea of the larger meaning then. It's beyond gruesome. It's something Salvador Dali couldn't do on a bad day."

What is the larger meaning? "The most sinister and devastating Al Qaeda plot would be to distribute 100,000 DVD players and DVDs of that flick on the Arab street," Repulski says. "There wouldn't be a live Americano left from Bombay to San Francisco."

Shot in CinemaScope and Eastmancolor, "Kismet" centers on a poor Baghdad poet who attains the rank of Emir in a single day and marries off his daughter to the Caliph. (As Robert Horton points out, "One comic number revolves around a man about to have his hand chopped off for thievery.") The movie was adapted from the 1953 Broadway musical of the same name, a show that even Amazon considers "Broadway at its most demented." 

Directed by Vincent Minelli, the movie starred chesty Howard Keel, belting Dolores Gray ("Baghdad, this irresistible town!"), wet rag Vic Damone, Ann Blyth, Monty Woolley and a cast of road-company extras. From the beginning film critics regarded this musical Arabian night as a Minelli failure. A half-century on it may be the kitschiest movie musical ever made. 

The song list alone is staggering. It includes "Sands Of Time," "Not Since Ninevah," "Was I Wuzir," "Bazaar of the Caravans," "Rahadlakum," "The Olive Tree," and two pop hits of the period, "Stranger in Paradise" and "Baubles, Bangles and Beads."

"If that's not enough to incite the Arab street," Repulski says, "Doug Fairbanks and Sabu in their Mideast flicker fantasies, distributed in equal quantities, would do the trick."