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Kings of the Sun
In order to flee from powerful enemies, young Mayan king Balam leads his people north across the Gulf of Mexico to the coast of what will become the United States. They build a home in the new land but come into conflict with a tribe of Native Americans led by their chief, Black Eagle, while both Balam and Black Eagle fall in love the beautiful Mayan princess Ixchel.
| Release : | 1963 |
| Rating : | 6.1 |
| Studio : | United Artists, The Mirisch Company, |
| Crew : | Art Direction, Property Master, |
| Cast : | Yul Brynner George Chakiris Shirley Anne Field Richard Basehart Brad Dexter |
| Genre : | Adventure History |
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Reviews
So much average
Must See Movie...
It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...
The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.
I liked this film very much for the following reasons: Number 1) Yul Brynner. Number 2) Yul Brynner in a loin cloth. Number 3) Yul Brynner's body in a dark, rich suntan. Number 4) Yul Brynner's body glistening with oil. Number 5) Yul Brynner with his suntan oiled limbs stretched out & tied. Number 6) Yul Brynner writhing around on a bed of hay. Number 7) Yul Brynner strutting around like a jaguar. Number 8) Yul Brynner in several seductive poses. Number 9) Yul Brynner's deep sexy man voice whispering sweet nothings, even if it was to goofy blind Ixchel. Yes, blind! I would've run off with Chief Black Eagle immediately but yet she only heals him so he can be a human sacrifice for her people!
I did not see this film when it was originally released. I was 12 then, but for some reason I was not attracted to it. So today, when I have finally seen it, I am not moved by nostalgia, as it often happens to me when I revisit films from my youth. This one is truly a poor motion picture, for all the reasons some reviewers have indicated: awful script and dialogs, inaccuracy of several sorts, corny costumes and settings, unbelievable hair styles, Caucasian actors playing natives of the American continent, and very bad acting, especially from Yul Brynner who overdid the macho number he created for the King of Siam, posing as if he were doing a photo shoot for "Tomorrow's Man" or any other male physique magazine of the 1960s Today it seems worse, with everybody speaking the same language (English), but with different USA accents, except Shirley Anne Field who did her best British phrasing. As for the score, once Elmer Bernstein complained in a letter he wrote me (he is the only composer I have ever exchanged correspondence with) that he had not convinced any record company to issue "Kings of the Sun", one of his favorite film scores. If heard apart from the visuals, I am sure it works, but to most ears quite probably it sounds as the score for a western or biblical film. As it is, it sounds strange adding musical comments to images that pretend to convey life in America the continent, before the arrival of the European conquistadors Bernstein was not all that wrong, in any case, for scriptwriter James R. Webb worked on this one just after "How the West Was Won" and before "Cheyenne Autumn", maybe taking it for another western without horses.
This should be a puzzle, as to how such a bad movie it is look with fondness, and nostalgia by so many? I only have watched this movie once, when it was released in 1963, or 64, and I was ten or eleven years of age, and despite the fact that the movie was filmed in part in my own hometown in Mexico, and I knew personally many of the locals hired as extras, trying to identify them in the background was my only source of amusement! The movie is terrible, based on a total fictitious story, that not only mix Mayans and Apaches their existence in two total different Geographical locations somewhere in the coast of Texas, but time frames as well, Yucatan Chichen Itza Mayans 1000 AD Apaches in the Southwest 1500AD! As for artistic merits, overacted by Yul Brynner, underacted by Chakiris. Costumes totally corny, and the so modern Western preoccupation with Human sacrifice, a cornerstone of the movie, plus of course white men, and women portraying Mayans, and Apaches!
Kings is an entertaining epic, the kind that faded out at the end of the 1960s. Yul is terrific but the rest of the cast is all wrong. Richard Basehart and Barry Morse were great actors but are totally miscast as Mayans. Shirley Anne Field is gorgeous and sexy but again, veddy British and miscast. Brad Dexter and Leo Gordon are way miscast; they belong in WW 2 war movies or lighting Sinatra's cigarettes. And George Chakiris is not only miscast but so bland and spiritless that it's impossible to believe that he could go mano-a-mano with Yul. Otherwise I did enjoy Kings of the Sun! I saw it just recently on a beautiful widescreen print and it brought back memories of seeing it as child in the movies.
