Like another reviewer said, not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. With this near all-Caucasian star line-up I suppose it couldn't be. Presumably having a summer holiday. Half the time I mistook Kenneth Cope for Oliver Reed. It seems to have been made as a sort of joke, along the lines of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Not exactly Oriental. Was it racist ? Genghis Khan, the most tyrannical and genocidal maniac before Stalin and Hitler, comes across as the Lord High Executioner, a civilized, courteous and charming gentleman to the bitter end. Difficult to know why Omar kept sparing his deadly enemy. Needed him for the final show-down, I guess. Slightly farcical. Morley and Mason get despatched gruesomely but tastefully. Wasn't too sure of what they'd been doing wrong. Unpoetic justice. They seemed so harmless, even if Morley carried his aestheticism to inordinate lengths. Dandy fingernails. All the deaths were very discreetly handled, even if there were rather a lot of them. Off-stage. At some moments it seemed a bit like a Wild Eastern, at others like the Sound of Mongol Music. I haven't seen Lord of the Rings, but I imagine Michael Hordern would be dead right for it. Fixedly aimed at the under-14 market, I can't help wishing myself back in those far- off days. I would really have enjoyed it then.
Review of Genghis Khan
