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Paul Maslansky, a producer behind films such as “Police Academy” and “Return to Oz,” died on Monday of natural causes at a hospital in Los Robles, Calif. He was 91.

Maslansky collaborated frequently with Oscar winner Alan Ladd Jr. Together they worked on “The Russia House,” “Death Line,” “Race With the Devil” and “Damnation Alley.” He also produced “Love Child” in 1982 as well as the 1979 comedy film “Scavenger Hunt” and the 1995 fantasy feature “Fluke,” starring Matthew Modine.

Following the production of “Love Child,” Ladd requested that Maslansky advise on The Ladd Co.’s upcoming movie “The Right Stuff.” After watching the parade scene in the film, Maslansky wrote a short story about a group of police cadets. This would go on to become “Police Academy,” which grossed $82 million in 1984 and led to six film sequels, an animated television show and a live-action series.

Prior to the film’s theatrical release, Maslansky...

Producer Paul Maslansky, who came up with the premise for the first Police Academy movie and got help from three world-class directors to push the troubled cult classic Return to Oz past the finish line, has died. He was 91.

Maslansky died Monday of natural causes at a hospital in Los Robles, California, his partner of 16 years, Sally Emr, told The Hollywood Reporter.

The New Yorker made his producing debut in Italy on The Castle of the Living Dead (1964), starring Christopher Lee, and he filmed George Cukor’s penultimate feature, the Elizabeth Taylor-starring The Blue Bird (1976), and Fred Schepisi’s The Russia House (1990), starring Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer, in the Soviet Union.

Maslansky, who collaborated often with Oscar winner Alan Ladd Jr., also produced Larry Peerce’s Love Child (1982), starring Amy Madigan in the true story of a woman who is impregnated by a guard in prison and has...

Who doesn't love a good Viking movie? Nearly a full millennium after the Vikings' heyday, stories of the Scandinavian seafarers and warriors who rampaged their way through Europe and around the world in the 8th through 11th centuries still fascinate us — enough to inspire an entire subgenre of historical fiction that spans various media. Film in particular has returned to the Viking world repeatedly since the silent era, with productions that hail from Iceland, America, Norway, Britain, Denmark, and more.

A quick scan of the most notorious Viking-themed films reveals that these movies have never been just one thing; it's a milieu that lends itself to comedy, romance, horror, superhero-style action, and, of course, the gruesome war sagas it's most commonly associated with. Here, then, are 14 essential Viking movies that should cover a wide range of cinematic tastes and proclivities, while still satisfying anyone who's just looking for a grand,...

At the intersection of big-star international dealmaking, the 70mm epic, and the humble sword ‘n’ shield actioner, this comic book viking saga stacks one absurd, borderline bad taste action scene on top of another. It’s an irresistible mash-up of earlier successes, well directed visually by Jack Cardiff. Richard Widmark at forty must play the Viking action hero, Russ Tamblyn at thirty is still a physical dervish, and Sidney Poitier takes on the strangest casting of his career. Plus, low sexist comedy from a platoon of hearty Brit thesps!

The Long Ships

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 137

1964 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 126 min. / Street Date June 29, 2022 / Available from Viavision / Aus 34.95

Starring: Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, Russ Tamblyn, Rosanna Schiaffino, Oskar Homolka, Edward Judd, Lionel Jeffries, Beba Loncar, Clifford Evans, Gordon Jackson, Colin Blakely, Paul Stassino, Leonard Rossiter, Jeanne Moody, Julie Samuel.

Cinematography: Christopher Challis

Production Designer: Vlastimir Gavrik, Zoran Zorcic

Art Director: Bill Constable...

Vikings don’t lack for precedent in the movies, yet the Old Norse boatmen have never quite taken hold in the collective filmgoer unconscious the same way as cowboys, pirates or mafiosi. The explanation may well be their inherent associations with paganism, cannibalism, rape and pillaging, traits understandably sanitized (if acknowledged at all) in late studio-era Viking narratives like Richard Fleischer’s The Vikings or Jack Cardiff’s The Long Ships. In 1984, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson—the supposed “bad boy” of Icelandic cinema—brought a pop-traditionalist sensibility to When The Raven Flies, which revisits Nordic mythology under the influence of spaghetti westerns, Kurosawa films and Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest. Gunnlaugsson’s stated aim was to make “the ultimate Viking movie”, and his trilogy deserves to be far better known; they are miniature epics, and the few outside of Scandinavia who know them probably have also heard them termed as “cod westerns.

Sidney Poitier’s two most iconic moments as an actor both occur in the 1967 Oscar-winning drama “In the Heat of the Night.” The first is his famous declaration “They call me Mister Tibbs!” The second arrives when his big-city detective is questioning a Mississippi cotton tycoon, who slaps Tibbs for implying that he’s a criminal. Tibbs slaps him back — an act of shocking-at-the-time defiance that Poitier improvised, and one that gave a jolt to film history. It connected, electrifyingly, with the militancy of the late ’60s, and left no doubt that Poitier was a figure of mythological magnitude.

As the first Black movie star, the Jackie Robinson of cinema, the trailblazer who always felt (by his own admission) that it was his obligation to represent, Poitier changed the movies with the very fact of presence. Yet it was the meaning of his presence, the ferocity and containment of it,...

Richard Fleischer's Viking saga is a great star showcase: for the grinning one-eyed Kirk Douglas, sullen one-handed Tony Curtis and the heavy-breathing, two-breasted Janet Leigh. Jack Cardiff gives us the fjords of Norway, lean and mean Viking ships, and a brain-bashing acrobatic castle assault designed to out-do Burt Lancaster. With Ernest Borgnine ("Ohhh-dinnnn!!"), James Donald and Alexander Knox. And as the old song goes, it don't mean a thing if it ain't got Frank Thring. The Vikings Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1958 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 114 min. / Street Date March 8, 2016 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, Ernest Borgnine, Janet Leigh, James Donald, Alexander Knox, Maxine Audley, Frank Thring. Cinematography Jack Cardiff Production Designer Harper Goff Film Editor Hugo Williams Original Music Mario Nascimbene Written by Calder Willingham adapted by Dale Wasserman from a novel by Edison Marshall Produced by Jerry Bresler Directed by Richard Fleischer

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson...

Stellan Skarsgard is set to star in Zentropa's big-budget international Viking movie based on Frans Bengtsson 1945 two-volume novel "The Long Ships".

Hans Petter Moland will direct the project which is described as the most ambitious Scandinavian viking project to-date. Tobias Lindholm penned the script.

Shooting takes place largely in the South-West of Sweden in 2015. Peter Aalbaek Jensen will produce.

Source: THR...

Exclusive: Maverick Danish producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen has announced details of his new $15m Viking movie The Long Ships – and that long-term collaborator Lars von Trier is planning an action movie.

Speaking at the Film i Vast reception in Cannes, Jensen said The Long Ships (Rode Orm) – directed by Hans Petter Moland (In Order of Disappearance) and scripted by Tobias Lindholm (The Hunt) – will star Stellan Skarsgaard and assorted members of the actor’s family.

“[Stellan] can bring one or two sons, depending on what we need in the story,” said Jensen.

The film will shoot in 2016 in Danish, Swedish and other Scandinavian languages. Zentropa is co-producing with Nordisk.

The Long Ships will be made as “one or two” feature films and as a four-part TV series.

Jensen, who will produce, said: “I haven’t seen a good Viking film in my life. The atmosphere of our story is very much Pirates of the Caribbean goes Viking.”

The...

Cannes – Stellan Skarsgard will star in big-budget international Viking movie based on 1945 book The Long Ships (Rode Orm), producer Peter Aalbaek Jensen (Nyphomaniac, Melancholia, Dogville) unveiled here Saturday. Zentropa, the film company he co-founded with Danish director Lars von Trier, had first announced the plans for the adaptation of the 1940s two-volume novel by Frans Bengtsson last year. At the time, it was described as the most ambitious Scandinavian viking project to-date. Photos: The Complete Cannes 2014 Official Selection Speaking at a Saturday press conference organized by Swedish fund Film I Vast, he also said

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By Brian Hannan

With all the (deserved) appreciation of Zulu, it’s hard to imagine it was a massive flop in the Us. Independent producer Joe Levine planned a double whammy for summer 1963 – The Carpetbaggers, an adaptation of the sizzling Harold Robbins bestseller, and Zulu. He even arranged for Zulu to follow The Carpetbaggers into the prestigious Palace first run cinema in New York. Spending big, Levine, whipped up a huge marketing campaign for Zulu, which had notched up record grosses in the UK.

But the two films could not have been further apart. Where The Carpetbaggers stormed to $862,000 from 25 theatres in the New York area, Zulu could only manage $190,000 from 30 in Los Angeles. Zulu scored well in first run in Detroit (running four weeks) and Chicago, but was quickly (perhaps too quickly) consigned to drive-ins. Failure to find a niche was not for want of trying. In successive weeks in La,...

Five films, four flavors of the ol' pillaging-in-leathers routine. Twilight-of-the-studio-era extravaganzas Richard Fleischer's The Vikings (1958) and Jack Cardiff's The Long Ships (1964) are delicious concoctions, grand and dopey and full of mead-hall brawling so spirited it's touched with musical theater—Seven Brides for Seven Erics could break out. Both also struggle to make sense of Viking immorality in movies that had to please the state board of review—The Long Ships' human sacrifice is a surprise, but The Vikings' love story, sadly, isn't. (The Vikings does have a pit of wolves and classic rooftop duel between Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas.) The violence in those sprightly epics isn't a patch on Nicolas Winding Refn's ...

Say it out loud, and the title Vikingdom, that slapdash portmanteau, reveals its hidden promise: Viking Dumb. That's a fair summation of the glory and ridiculousness of what director Yusry Abd Halim and his cohorts at Kru Productions have pulled off in this B-movie gone amok. They only could have improved on its accuracy if they'd just gone ahead and called it exactly what it is: The First and Best-Ever Malaysian Viking Flick with All-English Dialogue.

Imagine an old Hollywood mead-and-beard epic like The Long Ships (based on Frans G. Bengtsson's thrilling, hilarious novel, recently reprinted by Nyrb Classics) directed by an acolyte of young Peter Jackson—rococo violence! that restless camera! charming, cheap-o monsters!—who is determin...

Scandinavian production giants Zentropa and Nordisk Film are uniting to make the Viking epic The Long Ships, an ambitious adventure tale based on the novel of the same name by Frans Gunnar Bengtsson. The book, one of the Sweden's best-selling novels, has been translated into 24 languages. It is the story of Red Orm, a 10th-century Norseman living in the pre-Christian nation of Scania. Peter Aalbaek Jensen and Sisse Graum Jorgensen of Zentropa, who teamed on Susanne Bier's Oscar-winner In a Better World (2010), will produce The Long Ships, with Lone Korslund of Nordisk Film executive producing.

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Creative cinematographer and a key member of the Powell-Pressburger movie production team

Although the cinematographer Christopher Challis, who has died aged 93, was an essential member of the Archers production company of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, he joined them as director of photography at the time of their decline. However, he worked on more of the great British writing-directing team's films than any other cinematographer. These eccentric, extravagant, intelligent and witty fantasies went against the British realist tradition, allowing more scope for a creative cinematographer such as Challis. The sensuous use of Technicolor and flamboyant sets and designs made them closer to the MGM world of Vincente Minnelli and of Stanley Donen, who used Challis on six of his films.

Perhaps Challis's finest achievement was on Powell and Pressburger's The Tales of Hoffmann (1951) which, as he explained, had "no optical effects or tricks. It was all edited in...

After years of ridicule and misrepresentation, the Vikings are on their way home. Plans are well under way for what the Swedish company Fladenfilm is calling "the ultimate Viking movie". The $30m version of Frans G Bengtsson's bloody Nordic saga The Long Ships (which is due to shoot in 2013) will comprise two feature films and a television series. What is different about this project is that it is being made by Viking nations – the Swedes in combination with their neighbours.

I asked this question last June and I thought it would be interesting to ask it again and see what kind of responses we’ll get from our readers.

So let’s say you’re a filmmaker who has raised a good-sized budget, and have final cut and total control, except you have to remake of a previous film, what film would you remake? I’ve asked that question myself, to friends and now to you readers out there.

There are so many films I could name, but I assume, like me, you would want to try your hand at redoing some guilty pleasure that just missed the mark. Not a great film by any means, but one that you enjoy and in your heart just know you could have done a better job.

My first choice would be the 1964 chintzy, not-quite-epic adventure movie The Long Ships with Sidney Poitier and Richard Widmark.

Since I’ve been on roll lately (stuff to keep writing about just keeps popping up), and my item from yesterday asking about the first film you ever saw has inspired me to ask this question, which is like the “first movie” article; something I’m surprised we haven’t already asked on S & A.

So let’s say you’re a filmmaker who has raised a good-sized budget, and has final cut and total control, except you have to remake of a previous film, what film would you remake? I’ve asked that question myself, to friends and now to you readers out there. There are so many films I could name, but, I assume, like me, you would want to try your hand at redoing some guilty pleasure that just misses the mark. Not a great film by any means, but one that you enjoy and in your...

Ever since he was a kid, Joe Queenan has loved movies featuring Vikings or Greeks. But which is the best? Hold on to your heads as he wades into a very bloody battle

In the vastly underrated 2005 Anglo-Icelandic-Canadian film Beowulf & Grendel, the actress Sarah Polley refuses to go along with the gag, stubbornly clinging to her flat, emotionless, early 21st-century Canadian accent. Everyone knows that Norse sagas only work if everybody in the cast keeps a straight face and sticks to the Hrothgar of Elfungstan intonations, if all hands on deck refrain from smirking and winking at the audience when Ulrich of Vlinkstenndntmarksendondt declares: "Great are the tales of the Spear-Danes. Some tales sail; others sink below the waves."

Gerard Butler (Beowulf) certainly understands that, adroitly fudging a fifth-century Geat accent by using his authentic, all-purpose Scottish burr: the perfect one-size-fits-all accent for any movie set in any era preceding the discovery of penicillin.

Rosanna Schiaffino was the lovely Italian actress who starred opposite American Olympic athlete (and future Congressman) Bob Mathias in 1960’s The Minotaur, the Wild Beast of Crete. Schiaffino played the dual role of the evil Princess Fedra and her good twin, Arianna, in this filmic version of the legendary man-bull who roamed the Cretan maze searching from human sacrifices.

Schiaffino was born in Genoa, Liguria, Italy, on November 25, 1938. She won a local beauty contest in 1952, and soon embarked on a career in films. Her many film credits include Roland the Mighty (1956), the sword and sandal adventure Romulus and the Sabines (1961) starring Roger Moore, a segment of the episodic fantasy film RoGoPaG (1963), the adventure saga The Long Ships (1964) with Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier, the sensual horror film The Witch in Love (1966) as the supernatural Aura, the bio-film of the mysterious 18th Century count Cagliostr” (1974), and the giallo horror film The Killer Reserved Nine Seats...

The legendary Jack Cardiff is dead at age 94. He began his career as an actor in silent films, but later established himself as one of the industry's greatest cinematographers, with films such as The Red Shoes and The African Queen to his credit. Cardiff was a man of many talents, and dabbled in directing as well. Among his feature films were The Long Ships, Sons and Lovers, Young Cassidy and The Liquidator. Cardiff also wrote, directed and shot the popular 1960s cult film Girl on a Motorcycle (aka Naked Under Leather) starring Marianne Faithfull as a sexually promiscuous free spirit. Ironically, that film is the cover story of the latest issue of Cinema Retro, now out in England and due to ship in North America in early May. Cardiff was awarded an OBE by Queen Elizabeth in 2000. For more on his life and career click here.  ...