Dark Streets of Cairo Film Review

A low budgeter from Universal that doesn't quite reach the one-hour mark. It tries though. The script lands in solid B territory where everyone acts kind of stupidly. And throws in a comedy relief role. It's main claim to fame is of course the appearance of Sigrid Gurie. Yup, that Sigrid Gurie. I see a few blank stares. This should help. The Norwegian Garbo. That should click a few memory cells. No? Starred in the 1939 The Forgotten Woman. I guess she was. Of course, she was born in Brooklyn but Samuel Goldwyn introduced her as right off the boat from Norway and stuck her in The Adventures of Marco Polo as the Chinese romantic partner to Gary Cooper. The film bombed and two years later she was showing up in films like this. It didn't help her career when the press found out she wasn't Norwegian. Things like that don't happen in the movie business anymore. The studios used to make up great backgrounds for their actors - cover up misdeeds and make them related to royalty. She was of Norwegian stock though and her brother Knut Haukelid was a leader of the Norwegian Resistance. Enough about Sigrid I guess, I can't say she seemed anything like Garbo to me.

Seven jewels are unearthed on an archeological dig and are immediately the target of theft by an Arab curio shop owner played by George Zucco. With Zucco around you know you are in good hands. He has a gang called The Defenders who meet in a dark room that is part of a hidden system of rooms and doors. The jewels are being protected by Ralph Byrd (Dick Tracy) and Eddie Quillan, the woeful comic relief. The buyer from Zucco is Lloyd Corrigan who brings his niece, our Sigrid, to Cairo. The two guards decide to go out on the town and when Byrd exclaims "Look a white woman" and pesters her in a way that would get him arrested today, you know you are in trouble. Jewels get stolen and the chase is on.