The Conqueror (1956)

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

In this infamously bad film, Hollywood took on Genghis Khan and won, the dream of many of his enemies during his lifetime. The film was effortlessly funny but, sadly, it wasn't meant to be. The title role was originally intended for Marlon Brando but he was unavailable due to contractual reasons. He had a lucky escape. Considering that it is or at least tries to be a Western set in 12th Century Mongolia, John Wayne was cast as Temujin, the future Genghis Khan. This has rightfully gone down as one of the worst casting choices in film history.Had the film been made in the year of its release rather than 1954, the obvious choice for Temujin would have been the always wonderful Yul Brynner. In what would have been an added bonus, he actually looked the part. However, he was a Broadway actor who had only made one film by 1954. While Brynner was the actor most suited to the role, almost any other A-list actor of the time such as Brando, Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, etc. would have been better than Wayne. Like Marilyn Monroe, he was a great film star as opposed to a great actor. A few weeks ago, I watched "The Boys from Brazil" in which Gregory "Integrity" Peck plays Josef Mengele. He was likewise miscast but he tries his best in the role and is actually rather effective. The difference between Peck and Wayne was that only one of them was an excellent actor.The very white, red-haired Susan Hayward is every bit Wayne's equal in the acting stakes as the Tartar woman Bortai, whom Temujin kidnaps as he wants to marry her. However, she eventually falls madly in love with him. I would call it Stockholm Syndrome but she does not fall for him until after their roles are reversed. It's rather bizarre. I can't think of any reason for it other than "it says so in the script," frankly. Except for Richard Loo, none of the other credited actors look even remotely the part of Mongols, Tartars or Merkits either but most of them are at least better at acting. These include Pedro Armendáriz as Jamuga, Agnes Moorehead as Temujin's mother and Thomas Gomez as Wang Khan. However, the usually excellent John Hoyt plays the role of the Shaman as a stereotypical film Asian of the time as if this were a "Charlie Chan" film. At least none of the other actors did that! Dick Powell's direction is pedestrian but fairly competent. However, the screenplay is rather dreadful. It is full of laughable dialogue such as "I feel this Tartar woman is for me. My blood says take her," "I greet you, my mother!", "The man lies, my father!", "She is a woman, much woman. Should her perfidy be less than that of other women?" and "My hatred for him could not withstand my love!" Most of the worst dialogue is delivered in Wayne's unmistakable drawl, which makes it even funnier! Now, I don't mind it when characters in historical or biblical films speak in a more grandiose fashion than people in reality. In fact, that was part of the reason that I loved "The Ten Commandments" as much as I did just last Monday. However, that film's dialogue was marvellous. This film's dialogue, not so much.One thing about the film that is in no way funny, however, is the suggestion that it caused many of its cast and crew to suffer from cancer. It was filmed in Utah, downwind of the site of numerous nuclear tests in Nevada. By 1980, 91 of the film's 220 person cast and crew had contracted some form of cancer and many of them - including Wayne, Hayward, Moorehead, Armendáriz and Powell - had died because of it, Armendáriz having committed suicide after he learned that his diagnosis was terminal. It is far from conclusive but the University of Utah professor of biology Dr. Robert Pendleton had this to say on the matter: "With 91 cancer cases, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of 'The Conqueror' would hold up in a court of law."Overall, this film is a great laugh. I had seen it years ago, before I became a connoisseur of bad films, and I enjoyed it much more this time! Incidentally, given that she played Mary Kane in "Citizen Kane", Agnes Moorehead has the distinction of playing the mother of the title character in one RKO film which is considered among the best of all time and another which is considered among the worst of all time. That's worth something...isn't it?

This has to be the worst major Hollywood production of all time. Incredibly miscast throughout with unspeakable dialogue, beyond boring plot, trite art direction, and ridiculous costuming. Even the desert settings are totally wrong. The entire look of the film appears to be that of a Mongolian western. It's so bad that it makes the tepid Yugoslavian-based remake of a decade later (at half the price) look like a good movie. There are simply no words adequate to convey the disaster filmed here. That $6 million dollars could be assigned to this script is simply beyond belief. It's pure torture to sit through, unless perhaps, you're totally drunk and looking for the ultimate comedy of filmic errors.

I caught this film entirely by accident as you do. i'm usually working so I tend to more listen than watch.At first I thought it was another John Wayne cowboy movie. It sounded John Wayne, it sounded sort of cowboy, but something was wrong.I started watching to see him in some kind of fake Mongol costume with other obviously fake mongol\Chinese actors (white Americans). This wasn't so bad except that John Wayne was totally unfit for the position.He does absolutely NOTHING at all to be or move or sound even a tiny bit like a vicious Mongol warrior. It's like watching a cowboy film without guns set in Mongolia. You just can't divorce Wayne from it and so the movie literally collapses the moment he opens his mouth. Seriously, it does. It's a facepalm moment.On top of that, the script is awful, something a small child would do for his first class story. Wayne delivers it like he's alseep, all the way through the movie.Like others have said, it's so bad you just have to laugh. People in the 1950s surely must have seen this as rubbish once out. Even they could not possibly have liked this.This probably helped future historical film makers know what NOT to do as well as make them laugh out loud. It's worth watching for that.2 stars for the unintentional humour.

I first saw part of it on TV and saw it mention on a documentary, so of course I got to see the movie eventually, it doesn't contain any sort of historic realism but for me it's a decent, even good, watchable movie.The movie starts with "This story, though fiction, is based on fact." the only facts is based upon is that Genghis Khan did unite the Mongols and eventually defeated the tartars(which happens during the movie), but don't expect anything else, the actors don't look, dress or talk like real Mongols but I don't have anything with this as I consider it 99.99% fiction and don't expect realism. It does however have that romanticism of the age and from an action-adventure perspective, watching this movie wasn't a waste of time at all, in fact it was quite interesting.I've seen a lot of other movies who are worse(and still claim to be realistic), this movie doesn't claim to be real ,it's just vaguely inspired from real life and I for one did enjoy it as a classic action-adventure movie(with a touch of comedy here and there, intentionally or not), my vote for the movie overall would be 6/10 towards 7/10(because the story itself was quite fun to watch unfold). It's low rating is surprising to me, considering it doesn't claim itself to be historic but is fun to watch.