BY FRED BLOSSER
Mario
Bava’s Gli invasori or The
Invaders (1961) was imported to U.S. theaters in 1963 by American
International Pictures in a dubbed print as Erik
the Conqueror -- not to be confused now with Terry Jones’ 1989 farce, Erik the Viking. It was the sort of genre movie that would
have played on a weekend double-bill at the Kayton, the second-run theater in
my home town. There, it would have been
paired either with another Italian peplum
or sword-and-sandal epic, with a Hammer Films horror show, or with an Audie
Murphy western. The Kayton’s 1960s
double features were eclectic, to say the least. In that buttoned-down Cold War era, the peplums satisfied international box-office demand for movies about brawny
bare-chested heroes, curvaceous scantily-clad women, and exotic settings that
Hollywood productions like Quo Vadis
(1951), Ben-Hur (1959), and Cleopatra (1964) were slow to satisfy
because they were so expensive and time-consuming to produce. The model for Erik the Conqueror was Richard Fleischer’s very popular 1958 epic The Vikings, produced by and starring
Kirk Douglas. The influence must have
been obvious at the time even to undiscriminating audiences who watched the
dubbed import at the Kayton and its counterparts in other small towns. But The
Vikings required an investment of $5 million in 1950s dollars from Douglas’
Bryna Productions and its partners to pay for A-list Hollywood talent and
on-location filming in Norway. Bava
wrapped Erik the Conqueror for a
fraction of that cost using existing studio interiors, exteriors on the Italian
coast, a modest cast, and ingenious camera tricks that obviated the need for
hiring thousands of extras for crowd scenes and constructing new sets.
American
International’s 1963 movie poster played the film for exploitative value. “He lived only for the flesh and the sword!â€
the tag line proclaimed. The British
poster under the title The Invaders
similarly advertised, “He lusted for war and women.†Both ads suggested more sex and skin than the
script, costuming, and actors actually delivered. Like The
Vikings, Erik the Conqueror
centers on two antagonists who don’t realize at the outset that they’re
brothers. Dispatched by English King
Lotar (Franco Ressel) to negotiate peace with the Viking chief Harald, the
treacherous Sir Rutford (Andrea Checchi) instead attacks Harald’s village,
massacres Harald and most of his people, and engineers Lotar’s murder. Harald’s young sons are separated in the
chaos. Eron is rescued and carried to
Norway, while Erik is adopted by the now-widowed English queen, Alice. Twenty years later, colluding with Rutford,
Eron (Cameron Mitchell) leads an invasion of England and sinks an English
warship commanded by Erik, now the Duke of Helford. Kidnapping Queen Alice, Eron installs Rutford
as his regent. In the meantime, Erik
(George Ardisson) is shipwrecked among the Vikings. In a romantic misunderstanding, Erik mistakes
Eron’s bride, the Vestal Virgin Daya (Ellen Kessler), for his own sweetheart,
Daya’s twin sister Rama (Alice Kessler). The Vestal Virgins are an anachronism in the Medieval setting, but the
conceit gave the producers a chance to include dancing girls in diaphanous
gowns to pique the attention of male viewers. Once the misunderstanding with Rama is squared away, Erik rescues the
queen and proceeds to a showdown with Eron and the turncoat Rutford.
Arrow
Video in the U.K. has released a new, 2K restored print of Erik the Conqueror from the original 35 mm camera negative in a
Blu-ray and DVD combo package. The new
release provides a renewed opportunity to reassess Bava’s movie in a sharp,
letterboxed 2.35:1 Dyaliscope image, with critical context provided by
supplementary materials. Rescued from
the drab, pan-and-scan format to which it was doomed in old TV and VHS
editions, and enhanced even beyond Anchor Bay’s worthy 2007 DVD edition, it
emerges as an acceptable B-movie with respectable costuming and action
scenes. The production values are
notably better than those of most peplums
and easily comparable to those of Hollywood’s second-tier Technicolor epics of
the 1950s, if not to the overall finesse of higher-profile releases like The Vikings and Jack Cardiff’s lively,
underrated Norse epic from 1964, The Long
Ships. Plot, dialogue, and
characterizations are rudimentary, but then, so are those in the joyless,
overstuffed, multi-million-dollar costume epics of recent vintage. At that, some of the sillier lines in Bava’s
movie can be avoided by turning on the Blu-ray’s Italian voice track and
English subtitles instead of the English-language dub with its alternately
wooden and childish voices. The
simple-minded dialogue in Gladiator
(2003), Robin Hood (2010), and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)
is pretty much inescapable short of turning the volume completely off.
Even today’s Millennial fans of 300 (2006) and comic-book movies may be impressed with FX that Bava, who doubled as cinematographer in addition to directing the film, achieved without the aid of modern computer technology. For example, to avoid the cost of building a full-scale facade for Sir Rutford’s castle in battle scenes toward the end of the film, Bava matted an image from “National Geographic†on the camera lens, as #1 Bava fan and expert Tim Lucas notes on an informative, new commentary track for the disc. The difference between reality and illusion from this deceptively simple trick is hardly detectable in final analysis. It represents a thrifty effect that even today, executed instead through computer imagery, would run up a substantial cost from a CGI team’s time and expertise. Where older viewers may feel disoriented by Bava’s trademark, hallucinatory Gothic lighting in the studio-bound scenes representing the Vikings’ ceremonial ground, with props bathed in lurid colors against a deep-black background, younger audiences probably won’t mind. They’ve been conditioned to stylized, fantastic staging of epics by 300, Lord of the Rings, Nicolas Winding Refn’s eccentric 2010 Viking drama Valhalla Rising, and -- stretching the definition of the genre a bit -- Marvel Comics’ Thor movies. The gravest flaw of Erik the Conqueror is dramatic, not budgetary or visual. The script places the climactic confrontation between the brothers before the final battle instead of incorporating it into the melee, where it would have had greater emotional impact.
Viking dramas have made a modest comeback lately with cable TV’s Vikings and the BBC’s The Last Kingdom. Arrow Video’s new release, intentionally or coincidentally, may benefit from audiences seeking more of the same. In addition to dual language tracks, newly translated English subtitles for the Italian track, SDH subtitles for the dubbed English track, and Tim Lucas’ new audio commentary, the supplements include a short documentary by the disc’s producer, Michael Mackenzie, Gli imitatori, that compares the plot and style of Erik the Conqueror with those of The Vikings. Mackenzie acknowledges the derivative elements of the storyline, but convincingly argues that Bava’s Gothic flavor and Catholic iconography distinguish his approach from Fleischer’s -- to the extent that Erik the Conqueror stands on its own feet as a Bava work, not simply a Bava copy of Fleischer. The package also includes an audio interview with Cameron Mitchell by Tim Lucas, ported over from the Anchor Bay DVD, and a handsome souvenir booklet with production credits and an appreciative essay by critic and journalist Kat Ellinger. Oddly, there’s no chapter option on the menu of either the Blu-ray disc or the DVD. Whether this was an oversight or a deliberate choice by Arrow for technical or artistic reasons, the liner notes don’t say.
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