Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Film Khan Wayne
Posted by Curt Holman @Curt_Holman on Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 8:52 PM
They don't make them like Mongol any more. The sweeping costume drama about the rise of Genghis Khan (reviewed here) opens Friday in Atlanta. Despite the plethora of computer enhanced Hollywood blockbusters in the theaters, this Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee from Kazahkstan can compete by offering such old-school epic movie pleasures as endless, rolling vistas, battle scenes populated by hundreds of flesh-and-blood extras, and horses.
But will American audiences line up for a subtitled film starring a Japanese actor as the warlord of the Mongol horde? I don't see why not — it's not like the infamous American treatment of Genghis Khan fared particularly well. The Conqueror, produced by Howard Hughes, cast American icon John Wayne as Temudgin, a.k.a. the future Genghis Khan. Theoretically, The Conqueror fit the outdoorsy template of Wayne's usual action fare — an "Eastern" rather than a Western. In practice?
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/14_9EbDmvrM" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]
I do like his fur top hat, though.
The Conqueror's notoriety extends further than simply being named one of the 50 worst films of all time in 1978. The Conqueror was filmed in Utah downwind of the atomic testing site in Yucca Flats, Nevada, which is alleged to have stricken its cast and crew with cancer:
Of the 220 persons who worked on The Conqueror on location in Utah in 1955, 91 had contracted cancer as of the early 1980s and 46 died of it, including stars John Wayne, Susan Hayward, and Agnes Moorehead, and director Dick Powell.
One hopes that Mongol will have a better future.
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