La spada di Granada

Cesar Romero is a nobleman who's there to ring a bell and raise the locals to drive the Moors out of Spain. Tito Jumco is Ponce de Leon, so he's there to look for the elixir of youth that the Moorish alchemists supposedly have, and Katy Jurado is there to find gold in any form, disobey orders and get very jealous whenever Romero pays attention to beautiful princess Rebeca Iturbide.

It's the first 3-D movie produced in Spain, and while it's a thing of beauty, like many 3-D movies, it seems a trifle.... underwritten, shall we say? Every time the swashbucklers look like they're about to get somewhere, Miss Jurado hares off, they can be tortured for hours without feeling any effect, and of the two fight scenes, one in which Miss Jurado wrestle with an alchemist looks like he's dead and she's trying to pull him into her. Guards wander around the castle, looking neither to the right nor to the left, and the whole thing reminded me of a badly run D&D game. The final scene steals from 1938's THE ADVENTURES OF ROBIN HOOD for a few seconds, so that's briefly all right.

Despite the miserable handling of the plot, the actors are enthusiastic and engaged - except for the guy playing the alchemist - and the camerawork is pretty good for black-and-white 3D. Bob Furmanek and his team have been working for years to restore these movies, passing miracles in the process. Like many dull programmer of the 1950s, it's beautiful but dumb. So if you can disconnect your brain, you'll have a pretty good time.