El conquistador de Mongolia

" I see ya do not care ta feel tha tip of my lance, Jamuga" This incredible line was uttered by John Wayne in one of the most unbelievably funny movies of all time. How could he have done this movie ? This is a movie that must be seen to be believed . There are endless lines like this just read the other reviews to hear others but I could not resist adding my personal my favorite. He's chasing a fellow "Mongolian" around a field on horseback when this beauty pops out.I almost fell down.

John Wayne is the consummate cowboy, only Clint Eastwood comes close to approaching the title. So it's really jarring to the sensibilities to see Wayne standing there in a Mongol costume and a cheesy "fu manchu" moustache spouting barbarian lines in his trademark western drawl. It's like seeing Alec Guinness start acting like Pee-Wee Herman; some serious misalignment of the heavens has happened and maybe that guy on the corner saying "the end of the world is nigh" was right.

That aside, "The Conqueror" plays like an epic Cecil B. DeMille movie, with epic lines, epic scenery, and epic music. Say what you want about modern cinema, recent movies as a whole tend to be better researched, with characters, clothing, and sets that are historically accurate. This movie makes it clear they had no concept what Genghis Khan and his time was like. People, Wayne included, simply say grandiose lines without any inflection, as if they had no idea how to act the part.

Through it all, I kept expecting Susan Hayward to claim she was an alien or had fallen through a time machine. I doubt very many 12th century Mogolian women had red permed hair and wore low cut dresses. "The Conqueror" is either one of the worst movies you ever saw or one of the funniest.

I was originally going to award this film a much more generous rating, but it so outstayed its welcome I knocked a couple of stars off.

For one who professes such a love of classic cinema Martin Scorsese has form where it comes to not bothering to get his facts straight; the principal case for the prosecution being the shameless hagiography of 'The Aviator' which heroically portrays Howard Hughes as A Man with a Dream rather than the spoilt brat who squandered Daddy's money wrecking RKO.

It took a special sort of genius on the part of Hughes to blow the biggest budget in RKO's history to such little effect and wipe out several of Hollywood's finest talents - including John Wayne in a role originally intended for Marlon Brando - and a major studio in the process.

The idiosyncratic casting of the lead extends to the supporting cast by depicting Wayne, Pedro Armendariz and William Conrad as siblings and Agnes Moorehead as their mother (heaven knows what their father looked like), and Ted De Corsia as Susan Hayward's father.

It's easy to slam the Duke miscasted as Chinghis Xaan in this film [He was reportedly embarrassed enough not to mention it often in his lifetime] However, the real significance is great numbers of the cast that died of cancer: Susan Hayward, the Duke, Pedro Armendariz, Dick Powell, Lee Van Cleef, De Corsia, Leo Gordon and others. The film was shot on a site where A bomb testing had been conducted and this fact was hushed up for several years. Yes, the film did not have "legs" and is dated. But, I remember seeing it as a young guy and loved it. Years later after completing a doctorate in anthropology, I still love it...bad as it is.

My friends and I were lounging around watching a boring football game when we chanced onto this 1950's spectacular on TCM. We were astounded, stupefied. I'm not normally one of those people who gets off on really bad films--most bad films are just plain bad. But this was so bad, it was surreal--and hilarious. John Wayne, as usual, plays John Wayne, except this time America's iconic cowboy Real Man is in phony Oriental make-up, prancing around in fuzzy pelt vests, spouting lines in Medieval Mongolian Shakespearian barbarian-speak with a Western twang. (Example: "Ya didn't suckle me ta be slain by Tartars, my mo-ther.") With lavish pretensions toward epic grandeur, the sweeping outdoor vistas of the Central Asian steppe looking suspiciously like southern Utah, where the movie was indeed filmed. You think I'm making this up? I beg you, please rent this film! You won't regret it. Unlike most bad films, this film really is so bad that it's good. It's a bona fide disaster!