The Golden Arrow (1962) Leave it to the tirelessly prolific director Antonio Margheriti (a.k.a. 'Anthony Dawson' ) to come up with a one-of-kind screwball kids fantasy film that straddles the major shift of genres in Italian cinema.
By the early 60's, the Hercules 'sword and sandal' movies were reaching the end of the line and Italian filmmakers (including Margheriti) turned to variety of alternative genres......science fiction, bloody murder mysteries (a.k.a. 'giallos'), and of course our all time fave, imitation James Bond ripoffs.....
"The Golden Arrow" fits none of those categories.......it's an all out, sometime spectacular attempt at a fairy tale-like fantastical Arabian Nights adventure, along of the lines of the original British 1940 "The Thief Of Bagdad" or even the 1958 Ray Harryhausen special effects extravaganza, "The 7th Voyage Of Sinbad".
Armed with a script cobbled together by no less than five writers, the movie plunders multiple sources for its fractured mythologies......so everything but the kitchen sink floats around in the plot,,,,,,the titular magical arrow, its unbendable bow and a generous helping of genies and flying carpets.
Fronting all this nonsense is our very own all-American golden boy Tab Hunter (you could imagine all the other down-on-their-luck California actors he beat out for this role, including Leonardo DiCaprio's 'Rick Dalton' character from "Once Upon A Time In Hollywood"....)
Unlike other American actors who wandered into European films, Tab didn't stick around to re-dub his own dialogue, so his lines here were replaced by one of those typical, generic radio-announcer voice artists.......A damn shame too, since hearing Tab's distinctive beach-party voice might have added to the overall fun.
Yes, silly as this movie is (and we're talkin' seriously silly) it's a whole lotta fun to watch if you're willing to view it like an easily amused 13 year old.......a demographic we happened to fall into at the time of the film's release.
Our fab Tab, in his quest for the golden arrow and the hand of a hot princess (Rosanna Podesta) battles palace guards, his own bandit gang and assorted evil wizards, Viziers and fiery flame monsters. (You'll have to sit through the movie to truly appreciate fiery flame monsters.....)
As the Tab-ulator visits various lost mythical kingdoms (beautifully rendered, by the way), he's sometimes aided by a Three Stooges collection of bickering genies, who can do all sorts of cool stuff like freeze time and drop coconuts on people's heads while their parked in palm trees.
You certainly don't want to miss the bonkers finale, in which Tab and the genies, piloting magic carpets, wage aerial warfare on an entire desert army........(the genies, we kid you not, bombard them with pottery.....and no, you're not imagining that Tab's carpet makes the sound of jet aircraft. It really does......)
And composer Mario Nascimbene's rich, heavily choral score gets into the spirit of things with dreamy music and practically plays non-top throughout the film.
We won't bother with quibbling complaints about the low comedy hams playing the genies or the very, very obvious blue screen effects for the flying carpets. Hey, you either enjoy this movie for what it is, or stay away from it altogether.
Other than amused and annoyed at the terrible dubbing of Tab Hunter, we giggled and smiled all the way through this one. It's a silly 60's oddity but it more than delivers what it promises.
And just like Disney's Aladdin, Tab's dashing Hassan lives up to those lines in the song....."a hundred bad guys with swords.....he sent them all to their lords...." 3 stars (***)
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