The Prodigal
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Movie Reviews of The Prodigal
Movie Review: The Prodigal
Summary: 4 Stars
It was entertaining back in 1955 and still is as most of the "sword and sandal" movies that I like.Movie Review: Hollywood's Golden Trash: Kitsh in full force
Summary: 3 Stars
This movie is neither historical nor Biblical. It barely relates to a story of a prodigal son in the New Testament and the rest is Hollywood at its best producing cheap thrills, fantasy sets, and innocuous dialogue.
If you are looking for some delicious trash, soft-porn, hilarious accidental comedy, this is it. This movie has no relation whatsoever with the ancient goddess Astarte, the iconography is wrong, the rites also, the depiction of Baal is also mistaken, the costumes completely off, vaguely Babylonian, which is somewhere about 1000 years off in time and 500 miles to the East of location.
It is all ABOUT Lana Turner as Samarra, a pagan 'priestess of the flesh' possibility. The first time she appears, it's in a cream colored dress designed to make her look more naked than dressed, for the fashion conscious it should be noted that this outfit is a direct ancestor of the Cher fashion statement of the 80's when she had her TV show. Within the context of a retrograde period in American culture, of racial repression and Hollywood black lists I for one consider the wearing of this revealing costume an act of heroism, not to mention deserving of the purple heart equivalent of fashion bravery.
In an America before Jackie, where people actually thought that fashion pertained to the weird hats on Mamie Eisenhower, Lana's appearance as the priestess of sex must have been like an atomic explosion of sensory overload: She sashays her way into a ritual for the purpose of seducing Micah (Edmund Perdum) who apparently found a niche as Mr. Nice guy with a weakness for the femme fatale (he played a very similar role in the famous fiasco, "The Egyptian") holding her hands together in a gesture as empty of ritualistic significance as if she were holding her eyeliner, she lights candles and walks the walk around the faithful mainly for the purpose of giving Micah a saucy side glance that could burn a hole into a stone and set an entire stallion stable on fire.
At the time it was released, despite its huge $5 million budget it was panned as a vulgar extravaganza. It is, every inch of it, but it has enormous entertainment value, which leads me to believe a Broadway musical version of this material could make a fortune now if Nicole Kidman decided to play the high priestess role that Lana plays to the hilt, I sincerely believe it is the best performance of her entire career, and she never looked more ravishing. She looks exquisite in yards of fabric in a series of gowns that almost include all the colors of the rainbow. Her hair is piled up in a do that makes her look like she has small horns, a most becoming devilish look that is anything but accidental. She wears more jewelry than a Harry Winston window display the week before Christmas and she has the role of her life: This priestess is as vapid as a high fashion super-model of today, she is so self centered and infatuated with her beauty that she can barely walk straight, but she fills that screen totally with her garish sex appeal, like melting chocolate with mocha syrup covering a sundae cup.
Micah's family looks so weird with the most synthetic beards in Hollywood history, that you can't really blame him for shaving and playing it up in Damascus with the pagans. However he is in trouble from the start as he played good Samaritan and recued the escaped slave of Nahreeb, high priest of Baal, here played by Louis Calhern in a permanently sadistic mood, pierced ears included. I hope his outfits were re-cycled as sofa cushions for vinyl sofas in LA, such precious polyesters are not produced anymore and they looked synthetically dyed enough to last till the Second Coming, intact in their blinding splendor.
In her big temple scene Lana is perfectly devoid of any expression as a gorgeous athlete-sacrifice victim, much looking like a Swede than a middle eastener, is pushed into the holy fire by her sacred kiss.
For that matter no one in the movie is remotely in tune with the ethnicity of the region, and that includes Lana herself and her own version of Mini-me, a little blonde girl Lana look-alike- brat, that she is educating to to be the future priestess of Astarte, a creature so annoying and overbearing, one wishes they would have applied the true sacrifice to Astarte which were first born children...But my favorite moment is when Lana is attending a performance of a fable by her brat disciple and other children in the magnificent temple halls and yet one has the strange sensation that she is watching a television program somewhere in Staten Island with her favorite niece. How she can manage to transform that expensive pseudo-architecture into a suburban home atmosphere with her gesturing and sexy whispering is perhaps one of the outstanding miracle performances of Hollywood history and she should have been getting two Oscars for that scene alone: One for special effects and another for Lifetime Illusion technique.
But this movie must be seen, not discussed. It's main value is in the uniquely barbaric splendor of its plaster creations, the lavish yet empty spectacle, the unnecessary and inaccurate baroque details that are all at the very essence of camp, and high kitsh style, unmatched anywherelse. As a reference for this genre it is extremely useful, and unsurpassed.
Movie Review: The best showcase ever equipped for Turner excellent figure...
Summary: 3 Stars
Lana Turner was pure magic, emotion and sensation in her long walk through the temple of love... And "The Prodigal" will remain the best showcase ever equipped for her excellent figure... The film is M.G.M.'s entry in the CinemaScope Bible race...
Lana was cast as Samarra, the lightly-clad temptress who incited history's first juvenile delinquent to leave home...
The film was based on the Biblical story of the prodigal son as told by St. Luke in Chapter XV of his gospels... There, in fewer than 300 words is the bare suggestion of a youth who "wasted his substance in riotous living," later to return, repentant to farm and father...
The screenplay portrayed the prodigal as Micah (Edmond Purdom), the model son of a Hebrew patriarch named Eli (Walter Hampden). As the film begins he has honored his father by becoming engaged to Ruth (Audrey Dalton), a gentle girl of his own faith...
While visiting Damascus, however, the youth enters the tent of Samarra, the high priestess of Astarte, goddess of the flesh, and he is dazzled by her beauty... To his father's bitter dismay, he demands his share of the family fortune, leaves his fiancée on the eve of their marriage, and goes off to the city in pursuit of the pagan woman, whose duties include presiding over human sacrificial rites...
Among the fleshpots of Damascus, Micah's uncontrollable infatuation for the priestess plunges him into a variety of mishaps... He is victimized by Nahreeb (Louis Calhern), the sinister high priest of Baal, who conspires to destroy him for his irreverent interest in Samarra; by Bosra (Francis L. Sullivan), an unscrupulous moneylender; and even by Samarra herself, who withholds her love until he produces a certain valuable pearl as a gift for her goddess...
Movie Review: MGM reaches the nadir of tastelesness
Summary: 1 Stars
I rented this DVD from Netflix. I hadn't seen this film for many years. I guess I was a teenager when I first saw it back in the 1950's. The film is badly miscast: Louis Calhern as a high priest of Baal wearing a replica of the papal tiara, Edmund Purdom (where is he now?) as the prodigal son should have won a raspberry for his performance. And Lana Turner was much, MUCH too old to play a "virginal" high priestess of Astarte. After watching this film I came to realize how much more sophisticated films have become over the past fifty years. The film storyline was set seventy years before the time of Christ. Where were the Roman legions that dominated the middle east at this time? T
There are much better Biblical films to wile away one's time.
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