User reviews

Okay, so this is a movie with a throw-away script, characters and situations profoundly unlikely, some very inept acting, and even a title which doesn't make sense. So what?

DeCarlo was gorgeous, Albert Dekker was the heavy. They, and everyone else in this movie who should have had an accent, made a valiant -and occasionally effective- attempt to sound foreign.

This is popcorn Saturday afternoon matinée art. It is meant to be a joyride on a merry-go- round. Don't criticize the painted horses because they don't look real. Okay, Yvonne wasn't much of a dancer, but she could dance well enough for grade school kids. The color was pretty good. There were impressive sets, a bit of outdoor action, plenty of extras, and even some how-to-live-life-right by that venerable Asian philosopher, Abner Biberman.

I saw this in fall 1945> I had left ship on day war ended. We were in far reaches of Pacific and had not had a liberty or seen and spoken with a woman for over a year and a half. I flew to Honolulu for a school and was there for three weeks. Ship arrived and I rejoined it. Fueled and departed without touching shore. Sailors eager to get back to States and liberty and accompanying social life. The first night out the movie was Salome Where She Danced. The moans, and groans, and other manifestations of souls (and bodies) in torment would have amazed those of you who look at this movie in current times, under current circumstances.

I look at the movie now from time to time to savor the feeling of smugness I felt that night. I had had three weeks in Honolulu and so was perhaps less moved by the dance. I still look at it, though, from the experience of long deprivation.

I agree that much of the acting is deplorable, most of the plot, and all of the situations improbable. However, that dance is the whole reason for the show and in the fall of 1945 it was moving, gripping, and memorable.

"Salmone, Where She Danced" is Yvonne De Carlo's first movie. Apparently it made her a star...though today you wonder why. The movie isn't particularly good and there isn't much to recommend it.

The story begins in Vienna. Salome (De Carlo) is a bit but war is coming, so she accepts an American's offer to come to the States on tour. Once there, the audiences in the American west go insane for her...much like they did when Lillie Langtree toured the west. And, everywhere she goes, men go mad for her...though she seems particularly taken by a highway man who used to be a Confederate soldier.

The film never seems the least bit real, the men ALL go gaga for her in a way that is simply ridiculous and her singing and dancing are NOT particularly arousing or exciting to watch. I actually had a hard time sticking with this one...and the ending, well, it just seemed pretty tough to believe. All in all, a movie I wish I'd just skipped.

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.

I just saw this movie for the first time ever and I liked it. Her dancing was very entertaining. I read somewhere that she got the part in this movie because she knew how to dance. The scenery was great too. Yvonne is such a talented woman and beautiful. WE laughed at the silly kissing scenes, but that is what is great about old movies! I grew up with her on The Munsters and I am enjoying watching her in her earlier movies. They may not all be the best out there but still worth watching to see her act and sing. I am slowly purchasing all her movies and watching them as I receive them. I have a large collection of her memorabilia.

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 surely one of the worst films ever made and released by a major Hollywood studio. The plot is simply stupid. The dialog is written in clichés; you can complete a great many sentences in the script because of this. The acting is ridiculously bad, especially that of Rod Cameron. The "choreography" is silly and wholly unerotic. One can only pity the reviewer who saw 23-year-old Yvonne's dance as sexual; it's merely very bad choreography. The ballet scene in the film's beginning is especially ludicrous. If you are into bad movies and enjoy laughing at some of Hollywood's turkeys, this is for you. I bought the colorized version on VHS, making the movie even worse. Yvonne's heavy makeup, when colored, has her looking like a clown all the time. And she's the best part of this film. What a way to launch a career.

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.

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.

Ms. De Carlo did some great films - "Criss Cross", "Band of Angels" - but her acting skills never had anything to do with it. Both films I mentioned had her teaming with excellent directors and leads who made up for her limited range. One of the (many) problems with "Salome" is that De Carlo is on her own, neither director nor actors being good enough to provide any supply. David Bruce in particular is so non-expressive he makes Sylvester Stallone looking like Alec Guinness. His love scenes with De Carlo are ridiculous, as he conveys as much love feeling as he had a cow in his arms. So sad, for a better acting *might* have made the screenplay a pill easier to swallow. It takes much humor or abnegation to believe in such a mess of a story, blending Lee and Bismarck, Prussia and West America, and filled with implausible characters and situations. I guess some viewers may find it funny, but I found it simply dull and boring. The only good thing about this flick is its looks: photography is splendid, worthy of a better material, and Ms. De Carlo is really beautiful - if not in an emotive way.

Bombs like this one belong to Golden Age of Hollywood as well as celebrated masterpieces, so one has to accept their existence. But it is not a reason to waste one's time watching them.

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.