The Saracens (1963)
3/10
The Thanksgiving turkey recycled itself with this vulture.
27 November 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Low budget historical epics truly suffer with the cheapest movie cameras possible, shrill sound and recycled costumes and sets that attempted to appear new by being seen in movies filmed in the cheapest of paint by numbers color sets. This is another fable weakly told about the battles between Christians and Muslims in the wartorn Turkey of the middle ages. Richard Harrison is our hero: handsome, strong and brave, but a dull actor.

The battles Harrison gets into with the villainous Muslims are oh so predictable because he'll always prevail no matter what. In fact, the film's main villain (Walter Brandi) is far more interesting than him or heroine Annamaria Ubaldi, and there's also an overly sweet youngster (Maretta Procaccini) to attempt to get ooh's and ah's from the overly sentimental.

The pastel filters on the camera try unsuccessfully to hide the cheap look and make it prettier, but they can't hide the fact that the cardboard sets are just as flimsy as the main characters. While there's enough action sequences to tantalize the most patient of viewers, but this story has been done hundreds of times on screen and with a more convincing narrative.
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