What a strange movie. Check this cast-Tyrone Power playing a 36 year old college student(!), Jack Hawkins as Little John, Orson Welles as a Genghis Khan type(!?) enroute to sack China and/or bring some tribute to Kublai Khan, Herbert Lom(!!) in a cameo as a caravan-head, Michael Rennie in a two-season wrap-around cameo as King Ed, and some 14 year old blonde French lass who was shockingly 22(!) at the time-you could fooled me.
I donno quite what to make of it-nice desert filming, odds and sodds casting, a war is on but all you ever see is some smoke billowing off in the distance of some 'burning city', they wind up in China and then have to sneak out. Hawkins ends up dead-but you are also left hanging as to whatever happened to the girl.
Those last two scenes-King Ed forgives him for everything he said, Power does his Marco Polo bearing gifts and kick starting the rennaisance in the UK some 200 years early--ooo here's gun powder! here's the Printing Press! here's the compass!, only to be met by two armor-plated Mongol knight doubling as Western Union reps(!) all the way from China(?!), bearing the girl and a message from Orson.
Like I said, very, very strange. It's worth seeing just because, but-don't expect to see a war movie, that's not this.
**1/2 outta ****
I donno quite what to make of it-nice desert filming, odds and sodds casting, a war is on but all you ever see is some smoke billowing off in the distance of some 'burning city', they wind up in China and then have to sneak out. Hawkins ends up dead-but you are also left hanging as to whatever happened to the girl.
Those last two scenes-King Ed forgives him for everything he said, Power does his Marco Polo bearing gifts and kick starting the rennaisance in the UK some 200 years early--ooo here's gun powder! here's the Printing Press! here's the compass!, only to be met by two armor-plated Mongol knight doubling as Western Union reps(!) all the way from China(?!), bearing the girl and a message from Orson.
Like I said, very, very strange. It's worth seeing just because, but-don't expect to see a war movie, that's not this.
**1/2 outta ****