CID DOWN, YOU'RE ROCKIN' THE BOAT! BQ TURNS UP THE 6 TRACK STEREO FOR 'EL CID'..........

                  Return with us to the glorious age when theater owners never heard of acoustic baffling when they stuck Stereophonic speakers across the auditorium walls.........

                   ...........making the soundtracks of multi-million dollar epics like El Cid (1961) wildly bounce, warp, wobble and reverberate all over the theater.....

                    Hot damn. It was like watching a movie inside those caverns from "Journey To The Center Of The Earth"........

                     This one kicks off just like you want it to.......with the blast, bombast and romance of Miklos Rozsa's most celebrated music score......

                     Then we're off to the Epic Races with the appearance of Islamic madman Ben Yuffuf (a black cloaked Herbert Lom, looking like he'd have a hard time getting vetted at any U.S. Immigration checkpoint.......maybe yelling "Kill! Kill!" wouldn't sit well with customs...)

                      Big Ben's out to conquer Spain.......which has a boatload 'o kings, princes and nobles all squabbling with one another......like a congressional committee with armor and broadswords.....

                     Cue the fanfare, here comes our larger than life hero El Cid......who could only be played by Charlton Heston, adding to his growing gallery of etched-in-stone legendary monuments......(we used to think his copy of the script must be carved on two stone tablets....)

                     Chuck's budding engagement to smokin' hot noblewoman Chimene (Sophia Loren) flies off the rails when Chuck and his future father-in-law fly off the handle at each other, with  broadswords no less.........ooops, scratch one father-in-law.

                     Killing the bride's dad puts a major damper on the marriage, not to mention El Cid's futile efforts to bring Christians and Moors together to battle Ben Yuffuf........ even worse, his unswerving loyalty to conniving, young Spanish royals entangles him in no end of lethal intrigues......

                      But you know what we're all waiting for in a movie like this........battle-time, baby!

                    Arrows fly, spears go a-flyn', swords slice up invaders like Deli pastrami........and El Cid suffers more than his share of outrageous fortune's slings 'n arrows.....

                   By the time we lumber into the film's third hour (and final battle) El Cid shows his mettle by charging into Ben Yuffuf's gang with a severe handicap..........strapped to his horse, already dead.

                    Proof positive that you can't keep a good man down......

                     Watching the DVD of "El Cid" gave us our first real listen to the dialogue.......(in the stereophonic echo chamber of our neighborhood theater, all the actors sounded like the grownups in Peanuts TV specials.....wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-.......but then who really cared what they said as long as they got around to gut-whacking each other with swords.....)

                      And with its voluminous United Nations cast of American, British, Spanish and Italian actors, movies like this ushered in the Golden Age of the BQ's most guilty-pleasure genres.......the international Tower-Of-Babble co-production.........oh please, bring 'em on!

                     We may kid the pomposity of such long lost epics......but the filmmaking on display here should be savored, always..........for taking the time, energy (and considerable 1960's cash) to create genuine spectacle.........real armies, real horses, real pageantry........and nothing created on somebody's laptop.,,,,,

                       So we say..... Cid yourself down for a wallow in the kind of gorgeous, colorful spectacular that you'll never see again in this day and age. 4 Broadswords......(****)