The Conqueror

source: The Conqueror

I'm probably not part of the majority here, but I think this is a good movie. A lot of people are probably knocking it before they've even seen it because John Wayne plays Temujin. As the story goes, John Wayne wanted the role and he was very serious about it. He found the script in Dick Powell's office. I'm sure Powell had his reasons for wanting to throw the script out, but it can't be that it was that horrible of a script. The script is actually pretty decent. I can't complain about the make-up either because I think that was very well done too. John Wayne, between the make-up and his hair, really looks Asian in this. People that criticize this movie keep pointing out the nationalities of everyone involved. If you are going to do that then you are just nitpicking. Yes, John Wayne is a white man playing a Mongol. But you couldn't have expected them to cast a real Mongol in the role. Whites played Orientals and Native Americans all the time back then. Anthony Quinn, who is of Mexican and Irish descent, played Attila the Hun once. Omar Sharif, once played Genghis Khan. Stephen Boyd played Kahn's blood brother Jamuga. That Sharif and Boyd movie was horrible, by the way. The Conqueror is way better than that. The Conqueror is more accurate too. You're probably going to wonder, "Why John Wayne?" I said the same exact thing and I thought the movie was silly at first. But I actually sat down and watched it and I thought it was good. The Conqueror's opening is great. It opens with Temujin riding through the dessert with his Mongol army. The scenes of the army riding are great. They are shot so well. The action scenes of the Mongols fighting enemy armies were great too. If you want action, this has plenty of it. Another nice touch was the love story between Temujin and Bortai. Bortai is played by Susan Hayward. She was pretty decent in her role. I enjoyed her scenes with John Wayne. I also enjoyed Pedro Armendariz in his scenes with John Wayne. Armendariz was also decent in his role as Jamuga, Temujin's blood brother. A previous reviewer said that John Wayne and Pedro Armendariz are not believable as brothers. Keep in mind, the movie never says they are brothers, but they keep stressing blood brothers. Overall, I think The Conqueror was a pretty good movie. It pushed all of the right buttons for me. I enjoyed it very much. The Conqueror is a well made movie, with good performances, great directing, great cinematography, decent writing, great costumes and great make-up. I thought the score by Victor Young was great too. I especially loved the Romantic theme that Young uses throughout the movie. That was very memorable. If you ever get a chance, see this movie. If you are interested in the subject matter, check it out. If you are a fan of the old time classics or those Hollywood epics, check it out. If you are a fan of John Wayne and you want to see him in a different role for a change, check it out. John Wayne won't disappoint you. The Conqueror and John Wayne are not bad at all. Don't knock this movie until you've seen it. People were way too harsh when they placed their votes on IMDb. I'll bet that some people gave this movie a 1 without even seeing it. All they saw was John Wayne's name in the credits.

I almost always sit through a movie immediately before making any comments on it because I think the impressions ought to be fresh in one's memory. But it's really necessary -- if I'm ever to follow a categorical imperative -- to leave a few notes here to prevent others from enduring the agony I went through years ago. I don't even enjoy THINKING about the movie but I'm compelled by a sense of public duty. To be perfectly honest, I really believe there are two groups of people who would enjoy seeing this abortion. One group consists of people who have never seen a movie before. The second group consists of people who are stoned out of their gourds on weed. There are those who claim that the movie, like some others, is so bad that it's funny, but I wonder if they have actually sat through one of these monstrosities from beginning to end and were still able to laugh as the end credits rolled. More likely they'd be in a state of shock. There's no need to go through it. John Wayne is Temujin, later to become Genghis Kahn. Pedro Armendáriz is his sidekick, Jamuga. John Wayne looks like a rich American. Armendáriz looks like a Mexican cowboy star. Susan Hayward, as Bortai, looks like a glamorous Hollywood red-head. Oscar Millard is guilty of the script. "Truly, she is much woman." "Yew're beauty-full in yew're wrath." (Ie., you're cute when you're mad.) It's impossible to go on. This is beginning to set off a long-forgotten merry-go-round inside my head, to the tune of "Ah, Mustafa" played on a calliope. I seem to be sitting astride a hippocampus. Wait. It's speeding up. Now, it's really fast and I'm afraid that something will --

I must confess that I'd wanted to see this movie for a while, if only for its notoriety in cinematic history. This is one of the movies that just falls under the genre of "infamously terrible," and though the idea of John Wayne as Genghis Khan in and of itself is laughable, I wanted to see for myself why, exactly, it deserved such ignominy. Not two minutes into the movie, it was made clear to me. Still, one thing I can say for this movie is that it was humorous without trying to be. As I watched it, I could not stop laughing upon hearing the Duke utter such lines as, "Dance! Dance for me, Tartar woman!" So, in a sort of way, I do recommend seeing it, but only for hilarity's sake.

I previously reviewed Jet Pilot, another John Wayne film done for RKO in the mid-1950s. It was a BAD but fun to watch film. However, The Conquerer is JUST BAD. Instead of laughing at its ineptness throughout the film, the movie lasts so long that this one joke wears off very quickly and the viewer will most likely begin to contemplate suicide. Although abominable casting is important to both films and LOTS of abominable casting occurs in The Conquerer, it is the slow pacing, hackneyed dialog and tediousness that make this film so bad. DULL, DULL, DULL, DULL!!!! Okay, I got that out of my system. Now for the bad casting: John Wayne as the Mongol Terror (Genghis Khan), red-headed Susan Hayward (a miserable actress in general due to her constant overacting) as the Asian princess Bortai and, once again, red-headed Agnes Morehead as Genghis' Mommy. What were they thinking?! I assume that because Howard Hughes owned RKO and was well into becoming 100% unhinged, he personally must have made the casting decisions. No explanation other than insanity could explain it! I have made it a point to try to watch EVERY movie listed in The Fifty Worst Movies (Medved and Dreyfus) book and I've seen the vast majority of them. However, unless you are a glutton for punishment like me, I don't recommend you try to watch this film--after all, you've got to take care of your brain better than that!

" I see ya do not care ta feel tha tip of my lance, Jamuga" This incredible line was uttered by John Wayne in one of the most unbelievably funny movies of all time. How could he have done this movie ? This is a movie that must be seen to be believed . There are endless lines like this just read the other reviews to hear others but I could not resist adding my personal my favorite. He's chasing a fellow "Mongolian" around a field on horseback when this beauty pops out.I almost fell down.

If the rumors are true in fact and the whole cast was stricken with cancer as a result of atomic tests nearby, than The Conqueror in some respects may have been the most expensive bad film in the history of the cinema. There's a famous story about the differing attitudes of Walter Huston and Thomas Mitchell that Jane Russell tells in her memoirs about that other Howard Hughes epic, The Outlaw. She relates that Mitchell moaned and groaned throughout the shoot that this film would ruin him as an actor and why did he ever sign for it. On the other hand Walter Huston's attitude was to laugh uproariously at the awful dialog he had to spout and said since Howard's check cleared the bank he'd say any words in the script. Hopefully Howard's check cleared the bank for all concerned, because a decent pay day is the only reason for everyone from John Wayne and Susan Hayward on down to have stuck it out. What everyone doesn't get about The Conqueror is that it has a very gay subtext. It's obvious that Pedro Armendariz is crushing out big time on the Duke. They may have even gotten a little physical. But that all changes for Wayne the second his Mongol made up eyes set sight of red headed Tartar princess Susan Hayward. It's girls for him now, especially this one. Viewers might disagree, but I swear it's the only explanation for what happens in the rest of the film. Armendariz alternately betrays Wayne and rescues him for no discernible reason throughout the rest of the story. When Wayne finally takes care of all his enemies, Armendariz who won't share Wayne with Hayward or anybody asks to be put to death. So help me that's the plot of The Conqueror. Everyone from Wayne on down looks as trapped as Thomas Mitchell was in The Outlaw. But they all must have gotten the money up front. Fortunately John Ford would rescue Wayne with two back to back classics in succeeding years, The Searchers in 1956 and Wings of Eagles in 1957. Now those are really good John Wayne films. What more can I say, the acting is terrible, the story is awful, even the technical aspects of this film leave a lot to be desired. It only gets as high a rating as it does because of the quality of the cast, maybe the most shameful waste of talent players in the history of cinema in every sense of the word.

I see that there are six people who gave this idiotic, misbegotten, miscast film a 10 rating. I can forgive the twenty or so people who gave TERROR OF TINY TOWN a ten rating, but anyone who gave this a rating substantially higher than 1 is an idiot. Anyone who gave it a rating higher than 3 has never seen this movie. Anyone who gave it a 10 should be punished, punished severely. They should be forced to see it TWICE. I demand their names!

It's easy to slam the Duke miscasted as Chinghis Xaan in this film [He was reportedly embarrassed enough not to mention it often in his lifetime] However, the real significance is great numbers of the cast that died of cancer: Susan Hayward, the Duke, Pedro Armendariz, Dick Powell, Lee Van Cleef, De Corsia, Leo Gordon and others. The film was shot on a site where A bomb testing had been conducted and this fact was hushed up for several years. Yes, the film did not have "legs" and is dated. But, I remember seeing it as a young guy and loved it. Years later after completing a doctorate in anthropology, I still love it...bad as it is.

When I paid top dollar (actually $1.25) to see John Wayne's newest picture first run at Washington DC's fine RKO Keith's Theater, I had no clue I was watching the murder of America's all time favorite actor, as well as the murder of Dick Powell, Susan Hayward and altogether 88 others who worked on this picture. Lurking in a low population area of Utah was enough nuclear radiation to kill all these fine people. The story was well reported much later, and you can search it on Google. The final chapter was when the last survivors --- each dying horrible deaths from terminal cancer --- sued the Feds for damages. Our government decided that by filing a series of delay-motions they could wait it out until the survivors were dead. The nuclear radiation had drifted from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site about 150 to 200 miles west. John Wayne never criticized the US Government for this --- as the threats from Russia and Red China made testing necessary. It isn't fair, however, to misjudge and besmirch the work of director Dick Powell, or John Wayne, or the other fine people who worked on this movie. THE CONQUERER is definitely NOT one of the worst of all time, or even close to it. THE CONQUERER was not a serious historic movie, but rather a romantic action drama, combining lots of action scenes with romance scenes wherein much commotion and bloodletting, let alone hand-wringing, about who gets Susan Hayward. The picture was stunningly photographed, well directed and acted, with a fine and later imitated musical score by Victor Young. There isn't really a dull moment, and if any of the dialog seems silly, who really knows how people talked in 12th Century China? Anyway, it's similar in dialog to any of a hundred movies of this genre. Having seen the recent Discovery Channel documentary, we rented CONQUERER at Video Vault and watched it again. It stands up well compared to 2007 films; but then it's tough to be worse than Warner's trashing of J K Rowling in HP#5. The Conquerer and Plan 9 from Outer Space have nothing in common. Rent this fine film and respect the memory of the 91 who later died from making it. I've been to the extreme low population areas of eastern Nevada and nearby Utah over a dozen times, it's beautiful and peaceful and draws a person back to the natural beauty and solitude. Until today, I never gave the radiation a thought, not even in the lunch spot in Alamo Flats, NV. (But they haven't tested here in decades).