Salome, Where She Danced

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.

This is one of the most incredible, unbelievable film that I have ever seen. Kitsch, of course, certainly, totally crazy, a mix up of western spy, historical, adventure movie with the support in the cast of the flaming Yvonne de Carlo as a kind of Mata Hari character, involved with Bismarck's army. Albert Dekker is excellent here in a German villain role, and Rod Cameron also at his place co starring the great De Carlo. Many folks say that Charles Lamont was the reaf film maker of only one film, this very one, his forever masterpiece. Many audiences will despise this, because it looks like anything, and that's precisely for this reason that I love it.

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.

Miss DeCarlo's starring debut has everything the writers could come up with -- from the Franco-Prussian War to the US Civil War, the great American West, San Francisco in its heyday, ballet, opera, vaudeville, stage coach bandits, and a Chinese junk. Just when you thought the plot couldn't get any screwier, it does. It's magnificent, taken tongue in cheek. DeCarlo's character (here called Anna Marie -- NOT Salome, that's the role she dances) is loosely based on the career of the notorious Lola Montez, who was the mistress of the King of Prussia and caused a revolution when he gave her the crown jewels. She did escape to the American west. There is a town in Arizona called "Salome, Where She Danced," based on the historical fact that Lola Montez did dance the role of Salome there. StageCoach Cleve and the Russian nobleman who fall under her charms are not historically accurate, nor I assume is the Chinese wise man with the Scottish accent -- but it is one of my favorite all time camp classics and DeCarlo is breathtakingly beautiful throughout.