If you thought the 1965 Cinerama epic, "Battle of the Bulge" was BAD (and it was, in spades), wait until you attempt to sit through this turkey. Clearly, the writer didn't understand a single scene he wanted in the script, and the director was just as lost trying to interpret or give it any thematic point-of-view. It is one meaningless cliche after another and torture to sit through for all of 75 minutes. Battles are often a logistical mess, film's about them should attempt some clarity and a reason for all the carnage and sacrifice. It's beyond belief that someone can be handed a reported $3.5 million (admittedly a low budget, but still all wasted money) and end up with something as bad as "Wunderland". In the end, this film represents only a battle between the "filmmaker" and his bulging ego.
Reviews
7 Reviews
Ivanhoe
(1958–1959)
Introducing Roger Moore
9 July 2016
Richard Greene's "Adventures of Robin Hood" was in its 3rd successful year, and NBC was headed for a wrap on "Adventures of Sir Lancelot", when Columbia Screen-Gems decided (December, 1956) to produce this 39 episode series with Sydney Box Productions in England. Actually, the schedule to get the pilot before ABC (which didn't purchase the show) required that the first episode and the head-title/tail-credit sequences be filmed at the Columbia Ranch outside LA in February 1957. Only this episode was shot in color (only released for broadcast in B&W). The show then returned to post-winter England. The pilot-episode features Roger Moore with a much tighter haircut and an open-throat camail of armor. The backgrounds are also quite Southern California. The show was more lavish than "Robin Hood", and generally more engaging than "Sir Lancelot". Moore and Brown had good chemistry and became close life-long friends. The half-dozen best episodes would be, "Freeing the Serfs" (pilot), "The Witness", "The German Knight", "Rinaldo", "Brothers in Arms", and "Freelance". The most dramatically balanced of these (with better than average production) is "Freelance". The largest action scene is the closing ambush-and-battle, involving 25 mounted riders, in the higher budgeted pilot, "Freeing the Serfs". The best staged and scored sequence is the joust and duel between Moore and Christopher Lee in, "The German Knight". A lot of Baby Boomers have fond memories of seeing this series in syndication as kids.
Genghis Khan
(1965)
A Yugolian Conqueror
28 November 2015
Warning: Spoilers
While his former partner in Britain's Warwick Films, Al Broccoli, went off to make the incredibly successful James Bond series, producer Irving Allen was left to try and kick-start his solo career with a pair of last-gasp mini-spectacles in partnership with Tito's Avala Film Studios. Allen initially saw himself following in the footsteps of the Bronston-Franco relationship in Spain (just as it was beginning to collapse) but both his films, "The Long Ships" and "Genghis Khan", proved to be box-office flops. They did however introduce Yugoslavian locations to American producers and Avala had some success attracting film production dollars for another couple of decades.
"Genghis Khan" is a comic book version of the conqueror's life and if you approach it at that level, it is quite watchable. It is far, far, better than RKO's, "The Conqueror", with John Wayne as the Khan. While the star-cast of ten established actors is a waste of talent (all of whom look out of place in their roles and make-up), this is within the reduced dramatic ambition of what's being attempted here. The worst of the casting isn't with Mason or Morley, as a Chinese Mandarin and his emperor. That rests with Francoise Dorleac and her brothers, as the Khan's love and his three generals. They would have looked more at home at a Soho costume party. Dusan Radic's score is bombastic but quite effective. As with "The Long Ships", he has given the picture a signature theme which is memorable. Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography is always attractive and the settings are colorful, though not sufficiently lavish. The budget- production shows in a Chinese city that looks more like a theme-park and should have been written into the script as a palace grounds. It's a dozen structures, running divider walls, a canal, large moon-windowed palace facade, and a two-hundred-and-fifty foot section of fortified wall and gate, sprawled across 10 manicured acres, but a Chinese city it's not. 2nd unit director, Cliff Lyons' battle scenes are very fast and effective and feature lots of running horse-falls that had been outlawed on U. S. locations, 25 years earlier. He and director, Henry Levin, were restricted to maximum day-calls of 325 extras, of which no more than 250 could be mounted. So, again and again, film editor Geoffrey Foote is forced to cut from wide-shots as the crowds thin out. This is a hard way to conquer half the known world. Whether they belong in the film or not, most of the cast appears sincere in trying to deliver their paper-thin character sketches without pretension, and the behind-the-scenes crew creates a handsome product, which ends up being a travelogue of Yugoslavian production locations. In the end, only Tito really conquered here.
"Genghis Khan" is a comic book version of the conqueror's life and if you approach it at that level, it is quite watchable. It is far, far, better than RKO's, "The Conqueror", with John Wayne as the Khan. While the star-cast of ten established actors is a waste of talent (all of whom look out of place in their roles and make-up), this is within the reduced dramatic ambition of what's being attempted here. The worst of the casting isn't with Mason or Morley, as a Chinese Mandarin and his emperor. That rests with Francoise Dorleac and her brothers, as the Khan's love and his three generals. They would have looked more at home at a Soho costume party. Dusan Radic's score is bombastic but quite effective. As with "The Long Ships", he has given the picture a signature theme which is memorable. Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography is always attractive and the settings are colorful, though not sufficiently lavish. The budget- production shows in a Chinese city that looks more like a theme-park and should have been written into the script as a palace grounds. It's a dozen structures, running divider walls, a canal, large moon-windowed palace facade, and a two-hundred-and-fifty foot section of fortified wall and gate, sprawled across 10 manicured acres, but a Chinese city it's not. 2nd unit director, Cliff Lyons' battle scenes are very fast and effective and feature lots of running horse-falls that had been outlawed on U. S. locations, 25 years earlier. He and director, Henry Levin, were restricted to maximum day-calls of 325 extras, of which no more than 250 could be mounted. So, again and again, film editor Geoffrey Foote is forced to cut from wide-shots as the crowds thin out. This is a hard way to conquer half the known world. Whether they belong in the film or not, most of the cast appears sincere in trying to deliver their paper-thin character sketches without pretension, and the behind-the-scenes crew creates a handsome product, which ends up being a travelogue of Yugoslavian production locations. In the end, only Tito really conquered here.
The Conqueror
(1956)
BEYOND BELIEF... the ultimate cinematic nightmare
11 July 2015
This has to be the worst major Hollywood production of all time. Incredibly miscast throughout with unspeakable dialogue, beyond boring plot, trite art direction, and ridiculous costuming. Even the desert settings are totally wrong. The entire look of the film appears to be that of a Mongolian western. It's so bad that it makes the tepid Yugoslavian-based remake of a decade later (at half the price) look like a good movie. There are simply no words adequate to convey the disaster filmed here. That $6 million dollars could be assigned to this script is simply beyond belief. It's pure torture to sit through, unless perhaps, you're totally drunk and looking for the ultimate comedy of filmic errors.
Not Your Time
(2010)
Innovative short film with lots of style...
29 April 2011
I saw "Not Your Time" at the Boston International Film Festival where it won "BEST PICTURE (short film) and was quite surprised to find so polished a presentation in this category. These days, it seems they're all being shot on cellphone. This one, obviously cost quite a few dollars to produce. Jason Alexander and a cast of mostly Broadway favorites is always entertaining and the quirky editing and fine musical score often brought, "All that Jazz", to mind. I don't know who the filmmaker, Jay Kamen, is but he certainly knows his way around this project. I was also curious about the many cameos featuring a a host of film industry insiders. I'd have to image that Mr. Kamen knows these studio heads, Hollywood producers, and agents. This probably contributed to his being able to achieve such a slick visual look here. I found it quite different and delightful.
Kings of the Sun
(1963)
Great if you saw it as a kid...but then you grow-up...
25 July 2006
It hasn't improved with time. In fact, when I saw it again on the Japanese DVD, I cringed. It's easily J. Lee Thompson's worst picture. Even "Taras Bulba" stands above this. Bernstein's score is a mess. He obviously didn't care much about the project after spotting it for music. The script is awful, the dialog unspeakable, and the performances uniformly bad. The costumes are corny and the actors look and obviously feel ridiculous in them. Watch Brad Dexter's walk throughout. It's as if he's trying to balance that over-sized helmet on his head! I've heard Walter Mirisch is embarrassed by it and keeps it out of release. The Mirisch Corporation's 85 or so other pictures generate enough income without this turkey. I believe it's the only epic of the pre-Columbian Americas ever filmed. So it's a real shame that about $3,000,000. was wasted on this story. A few more months in scripting and it might have been worth the expenditure. You get the feeling this one was written on AeroMexico on the way down.
Land of the Pharaohs
(1955)
There's something about this film that stays in the mind...
7 July 2006
It's hard to say just what it is because on the surface "Land of the Pharaohs" doesn't appear to add up to much. It's director disowned it but like the pharaoh of his film, Hawks may have "built better than he knew". The film expresses a mindset that feels sincere in its belief that the afterlife is more important than the present. This is not a biblical story but it manages to represent religion in a more tangible form that almost all the film epics of the Judeo-Christian epoch did. There is a haunting heart of reality in Hawk's made up world. The colors, the cinematography, and the incredible score, all make you feel as if you are there in a way, say "The Ten Commandments", never achieves. I've read that none less than Marty Scorcese rates this as his all-time cinematic guilty pleasure. There's something about the Catholic boy's appreciation of ritual and religious mystery which must come to play in this. I've heard he's seen it thousands of times and that he often lets it play without the sound like a motion painting hung in the background. He's actually called it "a pillow", something you can roll over and rest on. I don't know what exactly it is that creates it but there is a sense of mysticism in this film. It may be melodramatic on the surface but there is something very captivating just underneath.
No one grasped the potential of CinemaScope until John Sturges filled the new frame with a vast nothingness in "Bad Day at Black Rock" and it wasn't until "Land of the Pharaohs" that the cinema actually saw just how impressive filling all that new space could be. It's placement on many lists of the greatest cult film doesn't surprise me.
No one grasped the potential of CinemaScope until John Sturges filled the new frame with a vast nothingness in "Bad Day at Black Rock" and it wasn't until "Land of the Pharaohs" that the cinema actually saw just how impressive filling all that new space could be. It's placement on many lists of the greatest cult film doesn't surprise me.
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