Ricardo, Coração de Leão

I give it a NINE as a 12-year-old. As a mature person, I can't say because it's not available, even on Netflix. At the time, I thought it a great adventure film. So they scrambled history a bit and the lines were corny; but with costumes, intrigue, and romance, plus Rex Harrison and the always impeccable George Sanders, what more could a kid want?

Especially loved the part "where King Richard meets Saladin and shows him 'the strength of English steel' by cutting through an iron mace placed across the backs of two chairs. Saladin responds in kind by throwing a silk veil in the air which separates as it falls across his scimitar, and he replies that 'sometimes it is not the strength of the steel but the sharpness of the blade.'"

Didn't you ever like some film as a kid for reasons known only to a 12-year-old?

I picked up a video of King Richard and the Crusaders this weekend at the local flea market, never having seen it before. In watching it, I kept wondering when the Crusaders were going to crusade against the Muslims. The Crusaders in this movie did enough fighting amongst themselves. Leopold of Austria and King Phillip of France were both ineptly trying to take leadership of the Crusade while Sir Giles (Robert Douglas) and Conrad (Michael Pate) were scheming behind King Richard's back. Sir Kenneth of Scotland was the only one he could trust. In fact, by the time it came to the part where King Richard (played by George Sanders) and his loyal Scot Knight (played by Laurence Harvey) were at the training joust, it seemed more like they were in old England than in far off lands. This was supposed to be the third Crusade, but if you are looking for a movie about the Crusades, this isn't really it. The film is based on The Talisman by Sir Walter Scott. I've not read the book, and it could be that the book had more actual Crusade history, with the movie being made to just entertain. It's an entertaining movie with all the familiar parts - good guys, bad guys, treachery and a damsel in distress. Plenty of sword fighting, arrow shooting and other weapons and that was OK with me as I like the action of the 1950's movies. So - if you are looking for a good old fashioned type action movie with sword play and a castle, you will probably like this one. As for acting, I wasn't too taken with Laurence Harvey as the love interest of fair maiden. His acting was adequate, but rather stiff. I guess I like the lead to have that easy going, devil-may-care attitude that can win the lady yet be poison to his enemies like Errol Flynn and Richard Greene. Perhaps it was the way the part was written, but he was angry and stiff-necked the whole movie. George Sanders did a decent job but could have had better writing for his part. Did you know he was married to both Zsa Zsa Gabor and then her sister Magna? That his brother was Tom Conway whom he handed off the part of The Falcon which he had tired of doing. In 1937 he told David Niven that he would commit suicide when he got older and did just that in 1972, leaving a note that he was bored. Rex Harrison was the supposed bad guy in this but really wasn't. He played the Muslim leader Saladin. Rex Harrison so very famous for many great parts. My favorite with him is My Fair Lady but others will remember Agony and the Ecstacy and Doctor Doolittle. Rumor had it that Carole Landis committed suicide over his ending the affair with her. However, she was besieged with extreme ill health (malaria, amoebic dysentery and pneumonia) caught while entertaining WWII troops and financial difficulties so who knows. Rex was his usual charming self in this movie and played his part well. The lovely lady in this one was none other than Virginia Mayo (always beautiful favorite) who did a nice job. Nothing academy award but a decent performance. I read where she was slightly cross eyed and had to be filmed carefully. She took her last name Mayo (real name Jones) from other actors in a vaudeville act years before. Unfortunately, we lost her in 2005. I did discover where those New Year's Eve ratchet noise makers came from. When the Crusaders were rousing the camp, one of the soldiers shook one above his head. An interesting sidelight is Henry Corden who played King Phillip, as he was the voice of Fred Flintstone for 30 years, taking over from the original man who passed away. The best idea for this movie is to strap on your sword and grab that spiked ball on the end of the chain (whatever it is called), take your critic hat off, and just enjoy some 1950's action!

Somehow King Richard And The Crusaders made the Medved list of the 50 Worst films of all time. I'm not saying it's Citizen Kane, but I've seen far worse. And until The Lion In Winter and Robin and Marian, we have never been given a true picture of King Richard I of England.

George Sanders who also in his career played King Charles II, a monarch of a far different temperament than Richard is in the title role. The film is based on the Sir Walter Scott novel, The Talisman and takes place in the Middle East during the Crusades.

As in the DeMille epic The Crusades which this bear a faint resemblance, The Lion Hearted King is beset with lots of problems, not all of them caused by the Syrian warrior King Saladin whom he faces in the field. Duke Leopold of Austria and Philip Augustus of France question his leadership of all the Christian nations, his brother Prince John is looking to seize his throne back home and right in camp, he's got a couple of fifth columnists in Robert Douglas and Michael Pate.

Pate and Douglas put in action an assassination attempt in which Richard is only wounded by a captured Saracen arrow. Richard's loyal retainer a Scot knight played by Laurence Harvey starts hunting up the assassins. But in the mean time, a truce of sorts is called as Saladin, hearing of Richard's attempt sends his personal physician played by Rex Harrison.

There is a romantic subplot going here with Harvey and a cousin of Richard's played by Virginia Mayo. Richard likes Harvey enough, but not to marry into the royal family, especially when as a royal princess, Mayo can be married off for alliance purposes.

Sir Walter Scott was one of those authors in the 19th century who cleaned up the Middle Ages quite a bit and invested those bloody times with a romantic aura. He was never more effective in doing this than in his more well known work Ivanhoe. In fact Ivanhoe is almost a sequel of this film as it deals with the capture of Richard by Duke Leopold on the way back to England after the action in this film is concluded and the ransom for Richard demanded and paid.

George Sanders and Robert Douglas were both in the screen version of Ivanhoe that MGM did two years before Warner Brothers did this film. Ivanhoe is a much better film, yet King Richard And The Crusaders does hold its own.

When the Medveds wrote that 50 worst film book they cited a line that Virginia Mayo says which is "war, war that's all you ever think about Dick Plantagenet". In point of fact that was the thing uppermost in that very bloodthirsty man's mind. More truth than humor there.

And you won't get much truth from King Richard And The Crusaders. Still it's not as bad a film as the Medveds would have you believe.

King Richard and the Crusaders is an entertaining movie, with plenty of action, nice costumes, some good scenery, and a fast-moving plot. Everything you would normally want from an adventure movie.

However, the script is horrible, many of the actors are completely miscast, the actual story is pretty poor, and it has next to nothing to do with the Crusades. It is not Crusaders versus Saracens. It is Good Crusaders and Good Saracens versus Bad Crusaders. Also, they most certainly do not have a cast of thousands, looking like it has a very low budget.

As a result, if you are looking for a historically accurate epic about the Third Crusade, you will be disappointed. Although it is not a great movie, it is underrated, being far better than a lot of other adventure movies, and is overall entertaining.

If you want to enjoy it, simply do not go into the movie looking for an award winning script and brilliant acting.

KING RICHARD AND THE CRUSADERS is a Warner Bros. attempt to get folks away from their TV sets during the '50s and watch a spectacular adventure film in CinemaScope and Warner Color. Based on a story "The Talisman" by Sir Walter Scott (of "Ivanhoe" fame), it contains a lot of absurdly anachronistic dialogue ("Go squat on the Alps!"), and plot- heavy nonsense that gets more and more entangled as the film plods toward another saber-rattling conclusion.

REX HARRISON seems to be having a fine time as a turbaned Mideasterner (Saladin) under heavy dark make-up in a rather physically demanding role not characteristic of most of his work. And LAWRENCE HARVEY is more animated than usual in a cardboard assignment, in love with VIRGINIA MAYO who has little to do but look decorative in her colorful costumes.

The big mystery is why David Butler (who specialized in comedies and musicals) was chosen to do the sort of directorial chores that should have gone to Michael Curtiz. One can only yearn for a better film when listening to Max Steiner's well orchestrated background score, but even his music fails to save an inept script from seeming even the least bit credible. Most of the dialogue is unbelievably bad in a screenplay by John Twist.

No wonder this was a box office dud, in no way reaping the sort of rewards Warner Bros. hoped for or the sort of success that MGM had with "Ivanhoe" and "Knights of the Roundtable."

Summing up: At your own risk.