The Golden Horde

Where can we begin? This is the worst film of all time having anything to do with Genghis Khan. It is even worse than the Conqueror, the hilarious joke of a film trying to pawn off John Wayne as an Asian. It took a tremendous effort to be worse than that turkey, but this film achieves it. There will never be a film about the Mongols as bad as this in the history of cinema. My sides were splitting from the howls of laughter from the sublimely destitute dialogue. The conversation with the princess during a duel with a mongol was one of the silliest scenes I have ever seen on the big screen. It left me speechless; and that is a very hard thing to do.

Ann Blyth makes a lovely and fetching princess of Samarkand. But in The Golden Horde her main concern is saving her city from all kinds of tribes who want conquer it and her. Into her life comes a knight who is an emissary of the Christian kings of the west offering aid. Today David Farrar would be a military adviser. A lot of double and triple dealing is involved before a climatic battle which is staged quite well. The cast also does well with the hokey dialog they have to spout. Universal turned out these medieval Mideast epics the better to take advantage of the sets built for Maria Montez This is far from the best of them.

I saw this about five years ago and don't remember the specifics, but I thought that Ann Blyth, whom I've always liked a lot, was very interesting in this role, as a very strong and forthright princess. She also looked beautiful in the costumes. I think she was far superior to the generally frazzled and annoyed Maureen O'Hara, and of course a better actress than campy Maria Montez, and should have been in perhaps a couple more costume dramas/exotic fantasies since she showed here that she had the capabilities of bringing such a character to life.