It has to be seen to be believed though you need to be in a very giddy frame of mind to sit through it. "King Richard and the Crusaders" was Hollywood's idea of what Sir Walter Scott's "The Talisman" might look like as a film and it's a howler from start to finish. It was directed, if that's the word, by that master of mediocrity David Butler and a cast who really ought to have known better and were obviously only in it for the money, included Rex Harrison, (in black face as Saladin), George Sanders, (looking very sorry for himself as King Richard), Laurence Harvey, (as a Scots knight) and Virginia Mayo, (as an English rose). But it's the dialogue that 'elevates' the film to something approaching cult status. "War, war, that's all you think about Dick Plantagenet" says Virginia at one point and there are many more where that came from. Atrocious but all the better for it while, of course, young boys, surely its target audience, will love all the derring-do.
Review of King Richard and the Crusaders
