Yearly Archives: 2017

Home/2017

Son of Monte Cristo

The Son of Monte Cristo
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1940
Director: Rowland V. Lee
Source: American Home Treasures DVD

Independent producer Edward Small’s biggest hit was The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) with star Robert Donat. Small planned to follow up with a sequel, but Donat bailed and went back to England, so the producer set the project aside until he found a charming new star in Louis Hayward. Sadly, this mediocre sequel doesn’t live up to its memorable predecessor, never really rising above Pretty Good. Much of the problem lies with screenwriter George Bruce’s story, a predictable cape-and-sword potboiler that’s more Anthony Hope (i.e., Zenda) than Alexandre Dumas, with a proto-fascist villain anachronistically thrown in for good measure.

At least the proto-fascist, General Gurko Lanen, is played by the lethally arrogant George Sanders, the only man in Hollywood who could out-sneer Basil Rathbone. The tale is set in 1865 in the fictional Balkan country of Lichtenburg, whose young ruler (Joan Bennett) is Grand Duchess Zona, a name that cannot be improved upon. Lanen and his jackbooted thugs threaten to usurp Zona’s power, so she attempts to escape to Paris to call for French intervention. Though her attempt is foiled, it’s stopped in a border incident that draws in the dashing Count of Monte Cristo—or his son, anyway, who now bears the title. Zona is taken back to Lichtenburg, and Monte Cristo, smitten, follows her.

The ensuing intrigues in Lichtenburg, though predictable, are entertaining enough, but the only thing Monte Cristo-ish about them is that the count adopts several guises and impersonations in his campaign to rescue Zona and her grand duchy from Gurko Lanen. The film plays genre-convention bingo by checking off secret passages, a masked outlaw, a grim castle dungeon, a fop with a quizzing glass, a secret treaty, a slimy sewer, a treacherous servant, forged documents, an interrupted wedding, and plenty of lively swordplay—nothing new here, but at least it’s enthusiastic. Hayward is likeable and energetic, Bennett is appealing and determined, and Sanders steals his every scene with sheer supercilious effrontery. Director Rowland V. Lee, who helmed the original, keeps the sequel moving along, and it’s a good time, mostly. Watch for Clayton Moore—yes, the Lone Ranger—as an earnest young guard captain loyal to Zona who allies with Monte Cristo.

By |2018-02-11T17:41:21-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Son of Monte Cristo
Read More

Son of Ali Baba

Son of Ali Baba
Rating: **
Origin: USA, 1952
Director: Kurt Neumann
Source: Universal Vault DVD

Son of Ali Baba

Universal decided to do another Arabian Nights-style adventure starring Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie, but this time around they got a dud. Thanks to his ex-thief father Ali’s vast wealth, Kashma Baba (Curtis) is enrolled with the sons of the nobility as a cadet in Bagdad’s Military Academy—which, except for the dark Curtis, is entirely filled with WASP-looking frat boys straight from the country club. (As usual, only merchants, thieves, and the caliph’s goons look like actual Persians or Arabs.) Kashma throws himself a rowdy birthday party in his opulent Bagdad house in which the caliph’s boorish son gets thrown into Kashma’s indoor pool. Uh oh! Vengeance is sworn, and the next morning Kashma is embroiled in a plot to ruin him and his father by foisting an escaped slave girl, Kiki (Laurie), upon him, only she’s really a princess who’s been promised to the shah unless she can find Ali Baba’s treasure for the caliph to save her mother but it’s impossible to care because this thing is a mess, okay?

I always hate to blame the writers, they’ve got it hard enough, but in this case I feel obliged to point the finger of shame at Gerald Drayson Adams, who concocted this goofy story and wrote all the terrible, terrible dialogue. There’s a definite high style to the classic Arabian Nights stories, and adapting that poetic diction to a movie script can be done, and well, but based on this clunker Adams had no idea how to do it. These poor actors are only human, and no one can say a line like, “I sense an evil hand has wrought this chain of circumstances!” without looking at least a little embarrassed. Poor Tony Curtis has it the worst, having to utter junk like, “Perished I would have, had not the princess dragged me from the flames,” all with a pronounced Noo Yawk accent. Yeesh. (“This is the palace of my fadda, and yonda is the Valley of the Sun” is actually from this film rather than the later Black Shield of Falworth.)

The only real point of interest in this otherwise dull and derivative exercise is the character of Tala (Susan Cabot), a bow-wielding huntress and friend of Kashma’s youth. At first it seems her only purpose is to make Princess Piper jealous of her connection to Kashma, but then she saves the day several times in succession with her deadly talents at archery. Tala is genuinely intriguing and capable, and how she wandered into this fiasco is anybody’s guess. The rôle should probably have been combined with the princess’s so Laurie would have something to do other than look ornamental, because as it stands, her considerable talents are wasted. Skip this one and watch The Prince who was a Thief a second time instead.

By |2018-01-02T21:02:11-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Son of Ali Baba
Read More

Sinbad the Sailor

Sinbad the Sailor
Rating: ***
Origin: USA, 1947
Director: Richard Wallace
Source: Warner Bros. DVD

Sinbad the Sailor

After making The Corsican Brothers in 1941, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. joined the U.S. Navy for five active, dangerous, and much-decorated years. After his wartime service, returning to mere movie-making must have seemed anticlimactic, and he took his time in picking the vehicle that would re-launch his acting career, finally settling on Sinbad the Sailor. He also decided to make the movie a conscious homage to his late father, who’d died in 1939, performing a lot of his own stunts, and adopting some of Doug, Sr.’s exaggerated silent-movie gestures and mannerisms. Unfortunately, the result feels forced and affected, and Fairbanks’s performance doesn’t jibe well with the more naturalistic approach of the rest of the cast, marring an otherwise perfectly-fine fantasy swashbuckler.

Strangely, though there had been a couple of animated two-reelers in the ‘30s, this film is the first live-action Sinbad movie. It’s amazing that it took until 1947 for that to happen, especially considering how many there’ve been since, but the success of A Thousand and One Nights had established the Arabian fantasy subgenre as a dependable money-maker, and from this point on they’ll come thick and fast. The story here follows the Arabian Nights convention of telling a tale within a tale, with a framing sequence in which Sinbad purports to tell his buddies in Basra the story of his hitherto-unknown eighth voyage. Unknown or not, it’s a familiar story, a treasure hunt built of standard elements, mainly useful as a setting for the lead actors to show their chops. Fairbanks was lucky in his co-stars, and it’s in their performances that this movie really shines. And so let us now once again praise Maureen O’Hara, the Queen of the Swashbucklers, who plays the clever and conniving Shireen, a Kurdish beauty with brains to spare. She’s proud and ambitious, but must somehow choose between wealth, power, and love (for Sinbad, of course!).

Now further, O Best Beloved, let us praise the worthy Walter Slezak, he of the waggling eyebrows, who as the barber-surgeon Melik (among other guises), serves as the evil genie of this morality play, a corrupter and tempter so cunning and sly you can’t help but admire him, though you know he’s up to no good. As usual with Slezak, the best part of his acting is the way he shares how much fun he’s having with us, the audience. O’Hara’s intelligence lights up her performance, but Slezak’s razor wit gives his a darker edge. His Melik knows he’s a villain and will probably come to a bad end, but he accepts that as his nature and revels in it.

Which brings us to the movie’s other villain, the ominous Emir of Daibul, as played by Anthony Quinn in his best rôle yet. Usually cast till now as a sidekick or second banana, here he comes into his own as a charismatic ruler of men and women, a confident commander both smart and ruthless. Quinn’s Emir—like Sinbad, Shireen, and Melik—is after Alexander the Great’s treasure on the lost island of Deryabar, and he means to have it. So do the others, of course, and between them there are plenty of temporary alliances and inevitable betrayals along the way, as well as romantic intrigue, stolen maps, virulent poison, Greek fire, and much waving around of those long, curved katar knives they all seem so fond of. Ultimately this is a fable, of course, so expect the ending to turn on a moral, before we return to Sinbad’s framing sequence where we started—Allah’s blessings be upon you!

By |2018-01-02T21:02:11-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Sinbad the Sailor
Read More

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Rating: ***
Origin: UK, 1977
Director: Sam Wanamaker
Source: Viavision Blu-Ray

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

After the success of Golden Voyage, Columbia Pictures and Ray Harryhausen decided to up their game by shooting the third Sinbad movie at eye-popping locations in Spain, Malta, and Jordan, including the actual ruins of Petra. Then I guess they figured no further improvements were needed, because they hired mediocre director Sam Wanamaker, a journeyman unable to mitigate the pacing problems of the story, which was already burdened by a dull and generic script by Beverly Cross. The cast is bland as well, featuring the charisma-free Patrick Wayne (son of John) as Sinbad, and the vacant Taryn Power (daughter of Tyrone) as Dione, the wizard’s telepathic daughter. Jane Seymour as Princess Farah gets to do some decent acting in a couple of early scenes, but then the movie forgets she has any character and demotes her to the role of not-much-clothes horse. The best actors, as usual, are cast as the magicians, Margaret Whiting as the transforming sorceress Zenobia, and Patrick Troughton (the Second Doctor) as Melanthius, gray and looking just like Gandalf minus the hat. The film’s saving grace, as always, is the stop-motion artistry of Harryhausen and his wonderful creatures.

The plot follows the tried-and-true quest structure, with Sinbad and company on a perilous journey to find a cure for Farah’s brother, Prince Kassim, whom Zenobia has transformed into a baboon. This animated primate, with its humanlike gestures and expressions, is entirely convincing, and ranks with Harryhausen’s best work. Zenobia also gets a first-rate animated companion in Minaton, a bronze minotaur golem with a clockwork heart and an endless reservoir of superhuman strength. With the baboon in almost every scene with Sinbad, and Minaton ever-present with Zenobia, Eye of the Tiger probably features more onscreen creature-time than any other Harryhausen epic.

The journey is the usual parade of wonders interrupted by fantasy mêlées. It’s a tribute to Harryhausen’s skill—and an indictment of Wanamaker’s failings—that the animated combats are far better choreographed than the live-action fights. In the middle of the film, as Sinbad’s ship sails toward arctic Hyperborea, pursued by Zenobia in a bronze boat powered by the untiring Minaton, the pacing sags in a miasma of fog, stock footage of icebergs, and a dumb battle with a giant walrus, possibly the least-cool Harryhausen creation ever. The pace picks up again when they reach Hyperborea, where Sinbad and friends encounter an over-sized pre-human they call Trog. Instead of the expected combat pitting Trog and his great bone club against the scimitars of Sinbad’s crew, Kassim the baboon befriends the primitive creature, and it trustingly joins their party. The friendly nonverbal interactions between Trog and the baboon that follow are delightful, and the animated creatures establish an emotional connection stronger than any between the movie’s “real” actors.

As usual, the climactic scene is set in an ancient temple, an Arctic pyramid with a magic ever-swirling Jacuzzi inside. This confrontation between good and evil is overlong and entirely predictable, and some fine monster-wrestling notwithstanding, you just wish they’d hurry up and get it over with. The wrestling comes courtesy of an ice-locked saber-toothed tiger, which in accordance with the ironclad Law of Frozen Prehistoric Beasts gets thawed out to menace the heroes. Once the final fight is over the film blessedly cuts straight to the end credits, which play over the coronation of the rehumanized Prince Kassim, while the rest of the good guys smile in bland approval. That’s fine: we don’t really need any character closure with them anyway, since none of them have half the heart and soul of Harryhausen’s noble beasts.

By |2018-01-02T21:02:11-05:00December 16, 2017|Cinema of Swords, Ellsworth's Cinema of Swords|Comments Off on Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger
Read More
Go to Top