Sémiramis, esclave et reine

Well, I must admit that this one put a smile on my face. As Susan Sontag put it in her essay, 'Notes on Camp', this movie is so bad- it's good! A movie with such huge ambitions and which fails so miserably deserves some credit indeed- this movie is serious 'camp' in its purest sense. Ricardo is fabulous...and Rhonda Fleming, how sultry is she? If anyone can find me a copy of this, I'd be forever grateful.

Now then, this is really pretty poor. The plot, insofar as that remotely matters, involves a young man "Amal" (Ricardo Montalban) who is badly injured after a fight and who is nursed back to health by pretty young thing "Semiramis" (Rhonda Fleming). The king's guard are none too impressed with her helping this rebel and so she is imprisoned, then paraded before the king "Assur" (Roldani Lupi) where he takes a shine to her. She becomes his concubine but when he is poisoned, she is the prime suspect and it falls to "Amal" to rescue her and restore order to the Kingdom. To be fair to director Carlo Bragaglia, there is plenty of action here but he is really let down by some sloppy production standards, bad continuity and fight scenes that are just too badly choreographed. Montalban is not anywhere near good enough to hold this up on his own, and it really does feel like a very long 100 minutes before an ending you could predict from the tea leaves. Pity, the story isn't bad, but the rest of it... Nope, sorry!

I AM AN ethusiastic fan of the fabulous movie star ricardo montalban and my comment refers to his performance in this movie. I recommend this movie to all ricardo's fans as well to all viewers who are into this genere swords& sandals adventures action movies. I think RICARDO is just great in this movie. Handsome virile and most convincing. He impressed me as a fighter and as a lover and he features the difficult role in a very impressing way. in several scenes he made me most excited. IT was in the dangeon where he is tortured by lashes on his bare chest and in the scene in the arena where he voluntarily fights sharks in order to save the lives of his innocent followers. in front of the eyes of his cruel enemies as well as in front of terrified presence of his lover now THE QUEEN OF BABYLON,he shows courage strength and high physical ability. i find him attracting and fascinating in every form. this is a personal point of view of an admirer of RICARDO montalban for more than 50 years. for those who are looking for a copy i have a poor one.

Wow. Saw this one the other night on TCM. Ricardo Montalban's name in the credits was the main draw, and he didn't disappoint. Montalban sports one of the most ridiculous mullets you'll ever see, short Ceasar-style bangs in front and Shirley Temple-style ringlets in back. Bad. The whole thing is laughably poor. The dubbing is out of sync, the costumes are a mish-mash of every known genre, the sets look like they're leftovers from some Egyptian epic. That said, if you're an aficionado of bad movies, this one will keep you busily making fun of it from start to finish. Who knew that the ancient Babylonians were such a braless and breasty bunch?

Yes, it's a feast of campy nonsense, but it's also better than the reviews would indicate and a clear notch or two above most of the "Hercules" movies which would be coming along just a few years later. The sets may be a stylistic mishmash but some of them are surprisingly impressive and most of the action scenes -- particularly a brawl inside a watering hole -- are well handled. The dialog's on the level of -- "I will wait for you in the old tavern by the marketplace" -- but it fits the overall tone of the proceedings. One complaint, however: a bit of editing would be welcome since the movie runs a few minutes longer than necessary. (The tape under review came in at 107 minutes.)

Rhonda Fleming may be utterly implausible as a Babylonian goat-herder but she, as usual, looks great in color. Ricardo Montalban plays most of his scenes in mini-skirt and earrings but to prove his masculinity, he repeatedly displays his chest which looks much hairier than it does in some of his other movies. Curiously, his dialog seems to have been dubbed in by another English-speaking actor.

Midway through the movie we see Montalban spreadeagled against the wall of a dungeon and whipped across his bare chest. In "The Saracen Blade," he was whipped across his bare back. This makes him, along with Steve Reeves, just about the only leading man in the movies to suffer both a chest whipping and a back whipping. (His flogging in "Babylon" ranks 65th in the book, "Lash! The Hundred Great Scenes of Men Being Whipped in the Movies," whereas his flogging in "Saracen" ranks 94th.)