ARABIAN ADVENTURE

As I recall, this movie came out of nowhere in 1979. This ad that appeared in the Sunday comics section was the first I'd heard or seen of it! It's also another one of those where the most memorable thing about the movie was, in fact, the ad!
Drawn by comic artist Alex Saviuk who was then or right around then drawing Marvel's flagship Spider-Man, it promises classic comics style adventure. It also seems a tad racist and incredibly generic, all of which are true.
Seriously, how could a picture go wrong with Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and...MICKEY ROONEY?? Well, luckily, the Mick doesn't have much to do here. Unfortunately, neither does Cushing! One Oliver Tobias gets the most screen time as the hero in this G rated effort, a bit unusual when you consider he was best known (if at all) at the time for his rather explicit sex scenes with Joan Collins in 1978's THE STUD, a low budget adaptation of Joan's sister Jackie's novel of the same name.
Since ARABIAN ADVENTURE he's continued to work but mostly in European productions. I've never heard of any of them and I'm betting you haven't either. You want to talk about Rooney's comeback in SUGAR BABIES? I'm with you. He actually handed me a bag of the candy at one performance. Lee's continued career that led him to both LORD OF THE RINGS and STAR WARS? Hey, he's one of my all-time favorites! I can even hold forth on poor Capucine's suicide or remind you that eighties uber band Duran Duran was named after Milo O'Shea's character in BARBARELLA! The problem is, I can't really remember much of anything about this incredibly unmemorable movie...except the above poster.
Artist Alex Saviuk, by the way, most recently assisted the late Will Eisner on what turned out to be his very last SPIRIT story, published earlier this year in THE ESCAPIST.