Can you imagine a movie with Rex Harrison playing Saladin, George Sanders as Richard the Lionhearted and Virginia Mayo as a Norman princess?\u00a0 Well don\u2019t try.\u00a0 It\u2019s just too bizarre to reconstruct without supercomputers and black magic.\u00a0 But it actually must have occurred in some alternate universe where completely improbable things happen.<\/p>\n
(Spoiler Alert \u2013 Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)<\/strong><\/p>\n I watched this movie for the first time today and I was flabbergasted.\u00a0 So, we\u2019re on the Third Crusade and Richard is leading a coalition of scheming nobles.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a great deal of nonsense that involves Saladin showing up in disguise as a doctor to heal Richard of his poisoned arrow.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n And there\u2019s another plot line where Richard\u2019s cousin Lady Edith Plantagenet (played improbably by Virginia Mayo) is in love with a Scottish knight named Sir Kenneth.\u00a0 Kenneth is apparently the only crusader actually loyal to Richard.\u00a0 But once Edith\u2019s love affair with this non-Norman man becomes known to Richard he turns against Kenneth and challenges him to an ordeal by combat.\u00a0 And then Saladin saves Kenneth\u2019s life but is also in love with Edith.\u00a0 Now the Holy War is just hopelessly muddled with love.\u00a0 What’s a crusader to do?\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n So, the good guys win and then Saladin rides away with his men and Richard comes around to Kenneth being his cousin\u2019s future husband.<\/p>\n The End.<\/p>\n You have to see this movie to know just how laughably bad this thing is.\u00a0 Rex Harrison with bronze face paint and a scraggly beard talking with some kind of fake middle eastern accent quoting the prophet.\u00a0 George Sanders playing George Sanders (of course) brow beating the other characters is insufferable.\u00a0 I found myself hoping the assassination attempt would succeed and end the movie quickly.\u00a0 And the rest of the cast is even worse.\u00a0 The strange thing is I kind of enjoyed watching this mess.\u00a0 I can\u2019t explain why.\u00a0 Maybe I was just in the right mood for a silly knights-in-armor spectacle.\u00a0 Who knows maybe it was the belly dancer.\u00a0 But I\u2019m not going to recommend this movie to anyone.\u00a0 Watch it at your own peril.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Can you imagine a movie with Rex Harrison playing Saladin, George Sanders as Richard the Lionhearted and Virginia Mayo as a Norman princess?\u00a0 Well don\u2019t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,237],"tags":[3719,43,38,1355,3718,3720],"class_list":["post-20166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","category-reviews","tag-george-sanders","tag-movie-review","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-rex-harrison","tag-virginia-mayo"],"yoast_head":"\n