A friend recalls seeing a film, many years ago (1950s or 60s), in which a character speaks the wonderful line, "0il the women." My friend cannot remember the name of the movie or much about it, except that it was a desert "sword and sandal" job in which a sheik or pasha or emir or something else very "Orientalist," preparing for a lubricious but acceptable-to-the-League-of-Decency orgy, utters the fabulous phrase.
I can't identify the film and the words don't google. Does anyone out there in blaguelandia know where such an inspired bit of dialogue occurred. Who said it? And more importantly, what genius wrote it?
In the absence of real information, I'm free to create my own scenario. It's got to be a 1950s film in now-faded Technicolor, and really cheesy. It's not a real desert but a sound stage with minimal sand and and a few plastic rocks. The inferior lighting allows you to see shadows on the stained backcloth that passes for a vista. The costumes are off the rack and every once in a while there's a visible zipper. A microphone appears briefly and intermittently at the top of the screen. The part of the sheik is played not by Steve Cochran but by one of his less-accomplished imitators. The dialogue is in pseudo-archaic phony-middle-Eastern-accented English.
News comes of a victory in battle and the bejeweled and beturbaned emir, whose heavy eyebrows dance above his too-heavily-kohled eyes, turns to his muscular bodyguards and shouts, "bring out the food, bring out the drink, oil the women."
Anyway, that's the way I imagine it. But it's also possible that the line comes from a parody of such a film. Could it be tucked away somewhere in a Marx brothers movie? Or somewhere in one of Mel Brooks' historical skits. It's Monte Pythonish but alas before their time.
Please help, friends of Vivian de St. Vrain. Who oiled what women?
Flipping channels years ago I saw this movie and heard this line and it was like "what?, but I don't remember the name either. Idk that it was central to the events of the movie but apparently I wasn't the only one who remembered such an unexpected declaration.
Posted by: Steve | November 10, 2023 at 01:17 PM