.........the risk that the movie that wowed us as a kid, that became a touchstone of our growing up, will look diminished when viewed with the wiser, cold maturity of an adult's eye.....
We've had enough of those experiences for sure.......but sometimes, the movie holds up just fine after the passage of decades......and for two hours transports us back to a happier, simpler time in our lives......
In the summer of 1958, our parents, along with two neighbor families, leased a ramshackle three story house in Ventnor, New Jersey......just a half hour or so boardwalk stroll from Atlantic City......the one and only summer we spent entirely at the seashore......
During the week, it was three Moms and their kids, the future BQ, an only child, and two sets of squabbling older-younger brothers....(the olders were 11 years old, the youngers, 8 years old, with Yours Truly in the middle at age 9) The three Dads, working 9 to 5 in Philly, would arrive only for the weekends......
We spent those golden summer days riding in the waves and gleefully demolishing our sand castles........come sundown, after dinner, we'd take that long but worthwhile hike down the boardwalk to Atlantic City and the brightly lit miniature golf course and the fabulous Steel Pier, where variety shows still lived, as well the amazing diving horse.......
Rainy days meant only one thing......the movies. And no movie we five boys piled into that summer gripped our imaginations like "The Vikings"........for the remainder of the summer, we transformed ourselves into mighty Norse warriors, screaming (like the movie Vikings) "Odin!" as we took flying leaps at one another.......we could even hum out the main theme from Mario Nascimbene's unforgettable, brilliant score......
To say the movie impressed the hell out of us would be an understatement.........practically mythic in its plotting, stunning in its photography (by Jack Cardiff, later to helm his very own rip-roarin' Viking saga, "The Long Ships")......and spectacularly brutal in its violence...(before it's even half over, Kirk Douglas has an eye torn out and Tony Curtis has his hand lopped off) And the Vikings? The coolest, toughest guys ever.......like Medieval Navy Seals........when they weren't out hacking and plundering, it was back to the coastal village for marathon ale binges and hurling axes at their wives' long blonde pigtails........
/Does "The Vikings" still stand tall, 59 years later?
Oh, you betcha. Still robust and muscular, still beautifully filmed, staged and scored. And here's what sets it apart from today's so-called epic fantasies.........the skilled scriptwriting dictates the placement and justification of the action sequences........as opposed to our usual, current CGI monstrosities, where the storytelling consists of spitball sound bites jammed in between the mindless, endless digital goulash.........
A week after we kids saw "The Vikings" in '58......it rained again. And off we went again to the same theater......to hear the actors yell out "Odinnnnnnnn!" before hurling themselves on top of three or four opponents. Forever a 4 star movie (****), it takes The Beached Quill back to the beach again.......watching it made us a kid again, riding in the waves and playing at conqueror of empires.......
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