She (1) (1965) -
I didn't really enjoy this film. It wasn't sooo bad, but it was definitely lacking a bit of pace and I thought that perhaps the time setting, revised from the original story, was a tad problematic. It seems to me that something about WWI (And later WWII) changed the world we had been living in, as if we grew up as a people or realised that we needed to advance as human beings and to stop warring or fighting over stupid things at all and that might have been where the technological revolution of the end of the last century came from. As such this fantasy story of the exploration of a lost civilisation just felt like it was set too late to be as believable, like they wouldn't have undertaken the trip without proper research or something? I don't know, but other films set pre 1900 - 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' (1959) for instance worked for me because the Victorian era was maybe a tad more naive and innocent.
I thought that was what was wrong about this one anyway.
The 3 leading fellas ventured in to the desert on a wild goose chase to find a city of myth and despite Leo's vision/invitation they were totally unprepared to find "She who must be obeyed" and her oppressed peoples and that was about as exciting as it got. There were a few scuffles here and there, but nothing that really grabbed my attention. I struggled to keep interest in it at all.
As for the actors, I've seen forests less wooden than John Richardson in his role of Leo and I didn't like his dyed blonde hair either. As he suffered through the sand and heat he was quite sexy in his vulnerable, sweaty and dirty state though.
The way he kept swapping between which girl he was kissing however, suggested that Leo was probably riddled with herpes and likely cooties too. Probably not someone to marry if you wanted a faithful husband.
Ayesha and poo-stain (Ustane) played by Ursula Andress and Rosenda Monteros (Respectively) weren't much cop with their performances as the romantic interests either.
Bernard (Cribbins) playing Job and Pete(r Cushing) as Holly were a bit typecast, but they weren't bad. I thought that Chris(topher Lee) played one of his better parts though in his character of Billali.
Other than that I would say that the composer obviously worked the trumpeters and percussionists hard, but someone should have supervised the other sound people because the dubbing was terrible, especially as they weren't even speaking a different language in the first place. There were clearly some scenes where the voices hadn't recorded properly and John in particular had needed to rerecord his lines, which didn't quite sync with the visual or the emotion he was delivering.
I won't say never again, but it will definitely be a while before I even contemplate seeing it for a second time and I doubt that I'll watch the sequel.
480.12/1000.
I didn't really enjoy this film. It wasn't sooo bad, but it was definitely lacking a bit of pace and I thought that perhaps the time setting, revised from the original story, was a tad problematic. It seems to me that something about WWI (And later WWII) changed the world we had been living in, as if we grew up as a people or realised that we needed to advance as human beings and to stop warring or fighting over stupid things at all and that might have been where the technological revolution of the end of the last century came from. As such this fantasy story of the exploration of a lost civilisation just felt like it was set too late to be as believable, like they wouldn't have undertaken the trip without proper research or something? I don't know, but other films set pre 1900 - 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' (1959) for instance worked for me because the Victorian era was maybe a tad more naive and innocent.
I thought that was what was wrong about this one anyway.
The 3 leading fellas ventured in to the desert on a wild goose chase to find a city of myth and despite Leo's vision/invitation they were totally unprepared to find "She who must be obeyed" and her oppressed peoples and that was about as exciting as it got. There were a few scuffles here and there, but nothing that really grabbed my attention. I struggled to keep interest in it at all.
As for the actors, I've seen forests less wooden than John Richardson in his role of Leo and I didn't like his dyed blonde hair either. As he suffered through the sand and heat he was quite sexy in his vulnerable, sweaty and dirty state though.
The way he kept swapping between which girl he was kissing however, suggested that Leo was probably riddled with herpes and likely cooties too. Probably not someone to marry if you wanted a faithful husband.
Ayesha and poo-stain (Ustane) played by Ursula Andress and Rosenda Monteros (Respectively) weren't much cop with their performances as the romantic interests either.
Bernard (Cribbins) playing Job and Pete(r Cushing) as Holly were a bit typecast, but they weren't bad. I thought that Chris(topher Lee) played one of his better parts though in his character of Billali.
Other than that I would say that the composer obviously worked the trumpeters and percussionists hard, but someone should have supervised the other sound people because the dubbing was terrible, especially as they weren't even speaking a different language in the first place. There were clearly some scenes where the voices hadn't recorded properly and John in particular had needed to rerecord his lines, which didn't quite sync with the visual or the emotion he was delivering.
I won't say never again, but it will definitely be a while before I even contemplate seeing it for a second time and I doubt that I'll watch the sequel.
480.12/1000.