"THE TARTARS" ......NO MAN IS AN ISLAND......BUT ORSON WELLES COMES CLOSE........

The Tartars  (1961)      For all of us in love with extra-cheesy 1960's Italian costume epics.......this one's Nirvana......the mother lode......Cheesy-Geddon!  Joy unconfined!

                 How can you not fall in love with this?  C'mon, people......it's Vikings in Halloween Shop blonde wigs versus  a Jumbo, immobile, oriental-ized Orson Welles as a Tartar warlord.

                   Orson, on his never ending Go Fund Me crusade to finance his own films, stays barely awake as waddles around his ornate palace.......he looks like a Lego Kublai Khan.......

                    Back at the Viking fortress, Heap 'o Hollywood beefcake Victor Mature parades around in one of Kim Kardashian's leftover mini-skirts. Unlike his be-wigged blonde hordes, Vic maintains his mane of greasy black hair......more power to ya, Vic.

                    Vic and Orson end up with hottie hostages from each other's families.......the Vikings hold on to the daughter of Orson's late brother (slain by Vic)......and Orson grabs Vic's beloved wife as she's trying to skip town in a Viking ship.........

                    A hostage swap is agreed to........but you know things do not bode well here......the Tartar princess has been knocked up by Vic's kid brother (the only Viking who sports real blonde hair)........and Orson's indulged in an all-night rape-a-thon on Vic's wife after drugging her with what looks like half a can of iced tea mix......(watching Orson chug along like a heavily robed toad through the corridors..... we could imagine the crew dangling his paycheck on a stick to keep him moving.....)

                   Naturally this ends up in a huge pitched battle between the opposing forces, but don't look for Orson himself to show up there......he's completely replaced with a stuntman stand-in for the galloping charges and the climactic tussle with Vic.

                    And hilarious lunacy abounds throughout the movie's 83 minutes........for every other line of his dialogue, a generic dubber fills in for Vic's own distinctive voice/////so in every scene he sounds like a victim of split personality.  Even better, the fearless, cheerful star offers himself up as a human target for the Viking catapult practice.......(we kid you not).

                      If you believe the opening credits, this international goulash was supposedly directed by the old MGM studio warhorse Richard Thorpe ("Ivanhoe", "Knights Of The Round Table")//////we  can neither confirm or deny, but seriously.......if Thorpe was anywhere near this production for more than a couple of hours, we'd be surprised as hell.

                     BQ visitors know by now that we toss out all sane critical criteria when it comes to lovable disasters like "The Tartars"......therefore, on our special Guilty Pleasure scale of enjoyment ......3 curved swords (***). We feel it takes the Pure Of Heart to truly embrace a pathetic piece of crap like this one........All  Hail Lego Orson!  Long may he waddle.......