Princess of the Nile

**_Colorful fictionalized portrayal of Egypt in 1249 AD_** Debra Paget plays an Egyptian princess who masquerades as a dancer and has an entertaining dance sequence that prefigures the two she would do five years later in Fritz Lang’s Indian Epic duology. The latter consists of “The Tiger of Eschnapur” & “The Indian Tomb,” which were butchered into one 95-minute film for American audiences called “Journey to the Lost City” in 1960. This is a ‘B’ movie by comparison, but it’s still very entertaining if you can roll with the “Yeah, right” fabrications. It smacks of a Sinbad yarn minus the sorcery. Another comparison would be Conan’s adventures in the Hyborian Turan, again, minus the sorcery. Roddenberry’s original Star Trek borrowed from the flick. For example, the tavern sequence in the unaired pilot “The Cage” featuring the green-skinned Orion dancer, which was aired in the first season episode “The Menagerie.” There’s a similar sequence in the second season’s “Wolf in the Fold,” albeit the dancer isn’t Orion. Then there’s Jeffrey Hunter as Prince Haidi who would of course play Captain Pike in “The Cage” and “The Menagerie,” not to mention Michael Ansara as Captain Kral would go on to play Klingon Commander Kang in the third season’s “Day of the Dove.” I shouldn’t fail to mention Michael Rennie, who’s notable as Bedouin army commander Rama Khan. It’s short ’n’ sweet at 1h 11m and was shot in Mar-Apr 1954 at 20th Century Fox Studios in Los Angeles. GRADE: B