Our Man in the Harem

A patrolman’s daughter is held captive in the Middle East.

The Sheik of Aramy

A more relaxed style, enabling Swackhamer to focus his attentions and energies on set-ups where he finds the camera angles that give him comfortable resources in which to couch his tale of Arab mischiefs and corporate corruption.

Notably, his odalisques are filmed with a rather long lens, or thrown in the background with a lack of focus.

The idea is that an American aircraft company in fierce competition with the French bribes an Arab buyer with girls for his harem (one a year from the also-rans at a beauty pageant). McCloud and a State Department agent ferret all this out, but the Arab has a ploy: claiming all these Americans are conspirators in a plot to oust his Sheik.

It will certainly be seen that this is admirably constructed as a reversible image of what is at stake in certain commitments and dealings, with a remote flavor of the Minotaur.

The suggestion is that American interests do not lie in supporting feudal interests along a corrupt line indicated by De Tocqueville as endemic to American business structures.

From another point of view, the exploitation of such a weakness is seen as futile because essentially provincial.

 

Anne Archer Wilhelmina Kirk
Michael Ansara
Ramal
Murray Hamilton
Donald Yates
Jeff Corey
Sheik Kipal
Robert Karnes
Officer Matt Houstachek
Kim O’Brien
Nancy Houstachek
Robert F. Simon
Mr. Caine
John S. Ragin
Mr. Jessup
Katherine Baumann
Eunice Selby
Dan Ades
Toto
Randi Oakes
Margo Dale

Story by Glen A. Larson, Lou Shaw
Written by
Glen A. Larson

Directed by E.W. Swackhamer

43315, 1.11.76

WILHELMINA: (To Yates.) I learned a long time ago that getting a story from a man like you is like getting pregnant. (Pause.) There’s just never an ideal time.

RAMAL: You Americans have taught the world what a wonderful thing free enterprise is.

McCLOUD: (At the computer.) You just watch this baby work. Do everythin’ but feed you.

OFC. HOUSTACHEK: Cut the bull!
YATES: Bull? That’s what America is all about. I’m asking you to invest in her.

WILHELMINA: Well, then you do think I’m lying.
McCLOUD: No, no, I just know that you ain’t tellin’ the truth.

McCLOUD: Well, the more people you got beatin’ the bushes for a stray, the more chances you got o’ bringin’ it in.

JESSUP: Marshal!
McCLOUD: You mean sucker, doncha?

McCLOUD: (Sizing up the American consul.) You just follow orders, even if it means lying.
JESSUP: Yes... no.
McCLOUD: We want to keep this conversation nice ‘n friendly, don’t we? Then you just hang in there with them yesses.

YATES: What are we going to do?
RAMAL: Throw in a catalyst. Change the look, smell, feel of things. Perhaps by a distraction we can save our skins.

SHEIK KIPAL: Conspiracy? I heard only of bribes and corruption.
RAMAL: They are tentacles of the same body.

WILHELMINA: I guess we’re in trouble, huh?
RAMAL: Fortunately, you won’t have long to live with it.
WILHELMINA: Terrific.

ARAMIAN SOLDIER: Are you Chief Peter B. Clifford?
CHIEF CLIFFORD: That’s right.
SOLDIER: You’re under arrest.
CLIFFORD: For what?
SOLDIER: High treason against Sheik Kipal.
CLIFFORD: (Snorting.) I don’t even know him! (He attempts to bully past and is subdued.)

RAMAL: But we have what we need to prove to the world what has gone on here today. The bodies are on the way here now.

SHEIK KIPAL: Are you... Sam McCloud?
McCLOUD: There ya go.

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