"RETRO-ACTIVE: AN ARTICLE FROM THE CINEMA RETRO ARCHIVES"
By Doug Oswald
Released
as a burn-to-order DVD from the Universal Vault Series, some may be quick to add
that they should have kept "The Conqueror" in the vault. The movie is notorious
for being one of the worst movies in Hollywood history. Much has been written
about how terrible this movie is so I'm going to avoid jumping on that
bandwagon. After all, calling this movie bad is like calling out water for
being wet.
The
movie is also a part of a conspiracy theory of sorts because many of the cast
and crew died from cancer and some have connected those cancer deaths to the
location filming in St. George Utah which was the stand-in for the Gobi Desert.
St. George is downwind from where the above ground nuclear testing occurred in
Nevada. Indeed, many involved with this movie did succumb to cancer including lifetime
smoker John Wayne who also denied any connection between his cancer and the St.
George location filming.
The
CinemaScope widescreen image for "The Conqueror" looks terrific and has an
appropriately grand score by Victor Young. The movie stars John Wayne and Susan
Hayward and features some of the best character actors of the era including
Pedro Armendariz, Agnes Morehead, Thomas Gomez, William Conrad and Lee Van
Cleef. If only the movie was the western it tries so hard to be rather than a 13th
century historical epic taking place in Central Asia.
Apparently,
nobody was more surprised than former actor and director of "The Conqueror", actor
Dick Powell, when the Duke insisted on playing the lead. When asked by reporters
during production how Wayne looked as Genghis Kahn, Powell replied, "Murderous.
Just murderous." I'd say murderous for the viewer too. While there's a lot of
ethnicity in the cast (Native American Indians from a local reservation were
hired as extras to portray the Mongolian hordes in the movie) it's hard to
believe that they couldn't cast a single Asian actor in this movie.
The
movie pulled in a healthy profit world-wide for RKO at the time of its initial
release in 1956, but it was critically panned and is difficult to watch. "The
Conqueror" was a personal favorite of the movie's eccentric producer Howard
Hughes who owned RKO at the time and pulled the movie from theatrical and TV distribution.
Apparently Hughes watched the movie over and over again, but it was not seen by
mortal men again until 1974 after the rights reverted to Paramount. This was the
final movie that Hughes personally produced and some may say it would have been
better if he had destroyed the negatives and all copies of the movie.
"The
Conqueror" was previously released by Universal in 2006 as part of the, "An
American Icon: John Wayne 5 Movie Collection" DVD set. That release included
the trailer, subtitles and chapters. This burn to order release appears to be produced
from the same source material because it looks and sounds identical, but includes
no extras and the movie starts up immediately after loading. "The Conqueror" is
a rare turkey for the Duke, as most of his post-"Stagecoach" output is very
watchable. It's a must-see for die-hard fans of the Duke and when hosting movie
nights where you want guests to leave early.
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