The Prisoner of Zenda

Apart some few Sellers's movies where he was really funny, all remains is hard to watch, this one is palatable and has funny moments really, on triple acting this movie is a spoof of so good movie made previously by Stewart Granger, quite often Sellers didn't make me laugh, but this turn is quite acceptable acting, having a valuable supporting casting as the funiest Lionel Jeffries, an already older Elke Sommer and the gorgeous newcomer Lynne Frederick!! Resume: First watch: 1991 / How many: 2 / Source: TV-DVD / Rating: 7

If you can manage to sit through the tedious intro with Peter Sellers as the aged king, the movie itself is not half as bad as we might expect. In fact, some of the sequences are genuinely amusing. And whilst it's true that Sellers is far too indulgently treated by the writer, the cameraman and the director, it must be admitted that the film has been produced with rare pomp and splendor on actual Austrian locations. The scenery is great and a lot of money has been spent on both location and studio filming. A fair amount of the action sequences are played fairly straight, and some of them even build up a modicum of suspense. True, the Elke Sommer sub-plot is often a bit of a bore, but the special effects are so outstanding, they thoroughly eclipse anything Whitlock has done before. Director Quine makes the most of his budget and puts the production money where it belongs, namely up there on the screen!

This is pretty fun, there is a lot of things going on that become garbled especially toward the latter from the plot like badguys switching to be good guys suddenly? This is cancelled by the nonstop narrative that just becomes action of people battling and all that stuff and it is here there is a vortex of hypnotism as you just follow this narrative without thought but just action. As I check this I keep thinking this must be a mid-60s movie and am surprised to check the release here. If you like candlelit castle locales at night well this movie is for you.

Prisoner of Zenda should have much to be proud of: nice music by Henry Mancini, good dual performance by Peter Sellers and gorgeous-looking cinematography and impressive sets and locations. Unfortunately, all this adds to nothing. The film is as if it were written seriously with the screenwriters assuming that it could be turned into a comedy simply by having Gregory Sierra overact and bulge his eyeballs every now and then and the rest of the cast move about in a humorous way. But it doesn't work that way, even Sellers cannot inject enough comedy into this film(in fact, much unlike Sierra, he is slightly underplaying his roles, which is good). In the end, one gets the impression that the team had a large amount of money and a good cast, but didn't know what to do with them.