Richard Flesicher's THE VIKINGS (1958) was, together with the original version of KING KONG (1933), the film I watched most during my childhood - and I still consider it one of the finest adventure movies ever made. Knowing that this was made in its wake, I have always been interested in watching it and, actually, I had seen bits and pieces from the film on a Sicilian TV channel one Sunday afternoon some 20 years ago! I finally acquired it a few weeks back but when, in anticipation of my viewing it, I read what my favorite online DVD reviewer Glenn Erickson aka DVD Savant, had to say about the film - calling it "a feeble joke", "a real embarrassment", "a total botch", and "one big goulash of mistakes" - I was somewhat dreading the prospect of watching it!
The cast is certainly promising: Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier (in their second of three collaborations), Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino (surprising casting, given that the film is a British/Yugoslavian production, but actually quite good as Poitier's non-Moorish wife who eventually has a brief fling with Widmark), Edward Judd, Oskar Homolka, Clifford Evans, Colin Blakely, Gordon Jackson, David Lodge and (in hindsight, unrecognizable) Lionel Jeffries! Widmark is fun as the tell-tale Viking hero but Poitier, saddled with an unbecoming Billy Dee Williams-type wig as a Moorish prince, looks miserable throughout (he later considered the film "a disaster" himself); Tamblyn as Widmark's brother is typically energetic and Homolka is evidently aping Ernest Borgnine's turn in THE VIKINGS as the Norse patriarch…but the most bizarre casting of all is that of Jeffries as the insufferable eunuch in Poitier's harem (although his screen time is mercifully brief)!
Director Cardiff had been the cameraman on the earlier Viking epic and, though THE LONG SHIPS was based on a book, it clearly took much inspiration from the Fleischer film: the Viking festivities, the Norse community welcoming its returning males, Widmark and Tamblyn both falling for female enemies, etc. Two of THE VIKINGS' major assets were the awesome cinematography and the unforgettable score; these two aspects are also notable here (courtesy of Christopher Challis and Dusan Radic respectively) - though the latter does grow repetitive after a while. The action scenes, with a surfeit of falling horses and leaping Norsemen, are decent enough - though the 'Mare of Steel' torture device promises brutality which never materializes! The quest for the Golden Bell (introduced in the notably colorful animated prologue) even equates this with the search for the Holy Grail (of Arthurian times) and the Golden Fleece (from Greek mythology). The highlight of the film is certainly the discovery of the bell itself and its subsequent tumble into the sea taking many of Widmark's crew along with it (although, it's rather inconceivable how a thing of that magnitude would float after falling from such heights)!
My verdict, therefore, may not be as harsh as that of Erickson or Poitier but there's little doubt that the amount of talent involved in THE LONG SHIPS should have made for a more significant film; ultimately, it's enjoyable as a juvenile romp but falls short of the full-blooded thrills delivered by THE VIKINGS. Incidentally, producer Irving Allen would soon go on to make GENGHIS KHAN (1965) - another maligned international epic which, again, I've been wishing to check out for a couple of decades and which is, surprisingly enough, still unavailable on DVD...
The cast is certainly promising: Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier (in their second of three collaborations), Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino (surprising casting, given that the film is a British/Yugoslavian production, but actually quite good as Poitier's non-Moorish wife who eventually has a brief fling with Widmark), Edward Judd, Oskar Homolka, Clifford Evans, Colin Blakely, Gordon Jackson, David Lodge and (in hindsight, unrecognizable) Lionel Jeffries! Widmark is fun as the tell-tale Viking hero but Poitier, saddled with an unbecoming Billy Dee Williams-type wig as a Moorish prince, looks miserable throughout (he later considered the film "a disaster" himself); Tamblyn as Widmark's brother is typically energetic and Homolka is evidently aping Ernest Borgnine's turn in THE VIKINGS as the Norse patriarch…but the most bizarre casting of all is that of Jeffries as the insufferable eunuch in Poitier's harem (although his screen time is mercifully brief)!
Director Cardiff had been the cameraman on the earlier Viking epic and, though THE LONG SHIPS was based on a book, it clearly took much inspiration from the Fleischer film: the Viking festivities, the Norse community welcoming its returning males, Widmark and Tamblyn both falling for female enemies, etc. Two of THE VIKINGS' major assets were the awesome cinematography and the unforgettable score; these two aspects are also notable here (courtesy of Christopher Challis and Dusan Radic respectively) - though the latter does grow repetitive after a while. The action scenes, with a surfeit of falling horses and leaping Norsemen, are decent enough - though the 'Mare of Steel' torture device promises brutality which never materializes! The quest for the Golden Bell (introduced in the notably colorful animated prologue) even equates this with the search for the Holy Grail (of Arthurian times) and the Golden Fleece (from Greek mythology). The highlight of the film is certainly the discovery of the bell itself and its subsequent tumble into the sea taking many of Widmark's crew along with it (although, it's rather inconceivable how a thing of that magnitude would float after falling from such heights)!
My verdict, therefore, may not be as harsh as that of Erickson or Poitier but there's little doubt that the amount of talent involved in THE LONG SHIPS should have made for a more significant film; ultimately, it's enjoyable as a juvenile romp but falls short of the full-blooded thrills delivered by THE VIKINGS. Incidentally, producer Irving Allen would soon go on to make GENGHIS KHAN (1965) - another maligned international epic which, again, I've been wishing to check out for a couple of decades and which is, surprisingly enough, still unavailable on DVD...