The Golden Blade

A bizarre cross between the Thousand and One Nights and the legend of KIng Arthur and the sword in the stone ,this is routine exotic story,saved by the two leads ,Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie.The latter portrays an outspoken princess who often leaves her palace to see what's going on in the town of Baghdad ,while a vicious VIP is doing very bad things against her noble father .Meanwhile,Hudson is searching the man who killed his also noble father .Both will discover they have things in common.Action-packed movie,nice colors,heroes , villains and a Greek merchant whose shop is full of bargains and of course a golden blade .

Rock Hudson in his pre-Douglas Sirk days (the director who provided him with his best works, along with Frankenheimer's "seconds") and Iin a movie obviously aimed at the children's market .

The screenplay may look like a poor man's "one and thousand nights" leftover ,but the colors are glistening ,Hudson is handsome as Harun, an oriental destitute prince in search of his father's murderer (the whodunnit is predictable and is not pivotal in the plot ); Piper Laurie has plenty of go as a feminist Sheherazade who mingles with the people,dressed up as a commoner or as a young man ("your skin is as smooth as that of a girl", says Harun);he even goes as far as to suggest they pick up girls for dinner!

The ending borrows from king Arthur 's story,complete with sword in the stone,and the old scholar as Merlin. And the tournament looks like those of European Middle-Ages. The baddie uses a watermelon as the world, aping Chaplin in "the dictator ".

But it was pleasant entertaining stuff for the kids of yore ; today's brats might be more demanding ....

During those early fifties, Universal Studios tried to replace the adventure movies from the forties starring Maria Montez and Jon Hall. Those colorful and action packed enchanted movies taking place in the south seas, Arabic deserts...So there were those One Thousand and One Nights tales, such as this one and SON OF ALI BABA, VEILS OF BAGDAD, PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF and many many more. Typical from this amazing studio. Generations of fans loved this kind of stuff and even still now old timers still crave for it. Lousy but fun and full of nostalgia. They don't make such films now. It's a lost period, but not for everyone.

This is a tale that comes straight from the "Arabian Nights" compendium. The son "Harum" (Rock Hudson) out to avenge his father murdered at the hands of the evil "Jafar" (George Macready). He must travel to Baghdad where he encounters a feisty young woman "Khairuzan" (Piper Laurie) who is secretly the daughter of the city's caliph - a man also in danger from the menacing ambitions of "Jafar". Luckily, she has a magical golden sword that she gives him to wield. He is invincible! Well he is until someone hits on the idea of swapping his sword for a less effective fake - and soon "Harum" is in a dungeon! Can he escape and save the Caliph and get the girl? Rock Hudson never really cut it for me. Easy enough on the eye, but his characterisations rarely differed from role to role and here he just doesn't really gel with the more charismatic Laurie at all. Plaudits do go to Macready, though - he hams up perfectly as the silken-clad, megalomanic, tyrant. There's plenty of lavish costumes, colour, sword-fighting and at times it's actually quite an entertaining adventure that I did quite enjoy.

Young Piper Laurie and handsome newcomer Rock Hudson were both featured to great advantage in this clearly-plotted and lively adventure-comedy. Imaginative veteran Nathan Juran directs very accurately and imaginatively, and the acting by George Macready as the ambitious villain, aided by Gene Evans (not quite up to a classical accent) and Kathleen Hughes and that of their opponents played by Edgar Barrier, the crafty Stephen Geray and others is above average for any genre. Adding to the fun is lovely Laurie impersonating a boy, a mysterious magic sword (which in lesser hands would have been a detriment) and its magical unwillingness to obey other than a virtuous owner. There is a prolonged sequence when various magicians attempt to remove the sword--which Macready needs to claim the throne--that has become embedded in a wall, and more physically colorful and beautifully-realized scenes than in any ten mean-streets melodramas of the post 1970s. If you do not fall in love with the spirited Khairozan, as Hudson does in the film, then you are probably dead. If you cannot delight in this youthful and stirring adventure of a bygone era, you had best give Grecianized Near-Easterns, our richest adventure genre in so many ways, a consistent miss.