"This extraneous introduction serves two purposes: it crystallizes my love of the genre (admittedly, more for its nostalgic flavor than for any intrinsic artistic merit of the films themselves) and also demonstrates that the city of Bagdad was more often than not at the center of intrigue found in these movies (in fact, there was yet another version of THE THIEF OF BAGDAD, made in Italy in 1961 with American muscleman Steve Reeves in the lead that I recall catching as a kid – on Italian TV like the rest of them – which has virtually vanished off the face of the earth since then)"
