Can you imagine a movie with Rex Harrison playing Saladin, George Sanders as Richard the Lionhearted and Virginia Mayo as a Norman princess? Well don’t try. It’s just too bizarre to reconstruct without supercomputers and black magic. But it actually must have occurred in some alternate universe where completely improbable things happen.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
I watched this movie for the first time today and I was flabbergasted. So, we’re on the Third Crusade and Richard is leading a coalition of scheming nobles. They attempt to assassinate him with a poisoned Saracen arrow so they can end their war against Saladin and concentrate on plundering the Holy Land.
There’s a great deal of nonsense that involves Saladin showing up in disguise as a doctor to heal Richard of his poisoned arrow. You see Saladin is so chivalrous that he wants Richard to survive so they can fight a duel to decide the fate of the war.
And there’s another plot line where Richard’s cousin Lady Edith Plantagenet (played improbably by Virginia Mayo) is in love with a Scottish knight named Sir Kenneth. Kenneth is apparently the only crusader actually loyal to Richard. But once Edith’s love affair with this non-Norman man becomes known to Richard he turns against Kenneth and challenges him to an ordeal by combat. And then Saladin saves Kenneth’s life but is also in love with Edith. Now the Holy War is just hopelessly muddled with love. What’s a crusader to do? Luckily the bad guys (the bad Crusaders in this case) kidnap Edith and so Richard, Saladin and Kenneth put aside their differences over religion, civilization and of course good acting and attack the bad guys.
So, the good guys win and then Saladin rides away with his men and Richard comes around to Kenneth being his cousin’s future husband.
The End.
You have to see this movie to know just how laughably bad this thing is. Rex Harrison with bronze face paint and a scraggly beard talking with some kind of fake middle eastern accent quoting the prophet. George Sanders playing George Sanders (of course) brow beating the other characters is insufferable. I found myself hoping the assassination attempt would succeed and end the movie quickly. And the rest of the cast is even worse. The strange thing is I kind of enjoyed watching this mess. I can’t explain why. Maybe I was just in the right mood for a silly knights-in-armor spectacle. Who knows maybe it was the belly dancer. But I’m not going to recommend this movie to anyone. Watch it at your own peril.
I identify with your attraction to movies from the middle of the 20th and before. It was from a sane era which our current era most certainly isn’t.
There is a huge amount of stress in watching our country and world devolve into insanity.
Tom,
You may have something there. Even a mediocre film like this one claims a lot of good will by virtue of our shared worldview. Richard the Lionhearted and Saladin are legendary men. Even the miscast actors like Rex Harrison and Virginia Mayo are fondly remembered for all the good work they did in some of my favorite movies. They’re like old friends.