Salome, Where She Danced

Weird pastiche that comes across more like a collection of movie scraps than a coherent storyline. Certainly Wanger and Universal spared no expense in glamorizing Salome (DeCarlo), or mobbing up the crowd scenes, or spreading on the Technicolor. Nonetheless, the screenplay makes no sense except as a vehicle for the modestly talented, black-haired beauty. As I recall, few movie plots I've suffered through are as hopelessly broken as this one. Then too, if the pointless narrative weren't enough, where did they recruit the lame David Bruce as Salome's love interest; he's about as expressive as a guy with face in a freezer. Too bad sexy Salome's romantic clinches couldn't inject some life into him. Small wonder his career went nowhere. No need to go on. Some take the lame results as camp; I take it as a plain bad movie. Good thing DeCarlo not only survived, but flourished.

Much underrated camp movie on the level of Cobra Woman, etc. Photographic stills resemble Rembrandt prints. Sometimes subtle dialog and hidden literate touches found throughout.

"Salmone, Where She Danced" is Yvonne De Carlo's first movie. Apparently it made her a star...though today you wonder why. The movie isn't particularly good and there isn't much to recommend it.

The story begins in Vienna. Salome (De Carlo) is a bit but war is coming, so she accepts an American's offer to come to the States on tour. Once there, the audiences in the American west go insane for her...much like they did when Lillie Langtree toured the west. And, everywhere she goes, men go mad for her...though she seems particularly taken by a highway man who used to be a Confederate soldier.

The film never seems the least bit real, the men ALL go gaga for her in a way that is simply ridiculous and her singing and dancing are NOT particularly arousing or exciting to watch. I actually had a hard time sticking with this one...and the ending, well, it just seemed pretty tough to believe. All in all, a movie I wish I'd just skipped.

Okay, so this is a movie with a throw-away script, characters and situations profoundly unlikely, some very inept acting, and even a title which doesn't make sense. So what?

DeCarlo was gorgeous, Albert Dekker was the heavy. They, and everyone else in this movie who should have had an accent, made a valiant -and occasionally effective- attempt to sound foreign.

This is popcorn Saturday afternoon matinée art. It is meant to be a joyride on a merry-go- round. Don't criticize the painted horses because they don't look real. Okay, Yvonne wasn't much of a dancer, but she could dance well enough for grade school kids. The color was pretty good. There were impressive sets, a bit of outdoor action, plenty of extras, and even some how-to-live-life-right by that venerable Asian philosopher, Abner Biberman.

This movie is just plain bad; no story to speak of, hard to follow, no clear direction to the script or continuity. I've seen it, and I'm not sure what happens in it, except a lot of nothing. Yvonne De Carlo had appeared in shorts and small parts before this, and was a good bet to star in a feature owing to her striking beauty and vampish charm. But "Salome Where She Danced" is an embarrassing mediocrity and is certainly not "bad"in the entertaining sense of Ed Wood or others on Hollywood's third-tier. As a Universal Picture, this is actually a thoroughly failed first or second tier production, and all of its slickness and artificiality does not conceal the glaring reality that it has nothing going for it. It is not "colorized;" it's in genuine Technicolor,though even the handling of the color is flat and undynamic -- sand is light brown, and one comes away with the impression that there is an awful lot of sand in the film, and perhaps a tumbleweed or two. De Carlo struggles valiantly with this bottom-drawer material only to achieve the status of being the best thing about a movie that has nothing to offer on its own, and even that distinction is a stretch. She is lucky to have survived this feature, as other potential stars have had their careers sunk by far less than this.