Ben watching some old movies – The Thief of Bagdad (1924 and the 1961 versions)
I also pulled out a Russian fantasy film from 1956 – Ilya Mouromets. I have much more to say about the film below, but something about this film blew me away. It’s incredinly topical.
Ilya Mouromets is a Russian culture hero, probably based on some historiucal figures from the 12th century. His name indicates that he’s from the town of Murom, not that far from present-day Kyiv.
In the film, he fights against the Tugars (obviously Mongols) who are lead by Tsar Kalin. The Tugars are Invaders from the East who are threatening to conquer the city of Kyiv.
It’s impossible to watch this right now and not think of the current conflict, with the Tsar Putin, um, I mean Tsar Kalin sending warnings to Kyiv to surrender, being obnoxious jerks about it, and expecting the Kyivans to simply knuckle under. Eventually the Tugars use their air superiority, sending in a three-headed fire breathing dragon (obviously named MIRV), who the Kyivans defeat handily.
The film might be popular in Ukraine right now, except, a a Mosfilm production it makes much of Kyiv as the seat of the Kievan Rus, abd the origin of Russia. That’s a bit of Russian history that Putin is making much of now to “prove” that the Ukraine is an inevitable and historic part of Russia, which the Ukrainians understandably don’t want to have anything to do with. But they’d love the images of Boris Andreyev as Ilya beating the snot out of the invading Tugars, and stuffing Tsar Kalin into a sack at the end.
The film fell into the hands of noted movie hack Roger Corman, who re-cut it and added voice ovcerdubs, including Mike Wallace (!) as narrator and perpetual and ubiquitous voice actor Paul Frees doing several of the voices, including Tsar Kalin, who he makes sound exactly like Boris Badenov from Rocky and Bullwinkle (Frees was the voice of Boris Bademov, too).
I actually paid money to see this film at a matinee at our local movie theater under the new title The Sword and the Dragon. There was a Dell comic book adaptation, too. Within a year or so it was on TV, playing on a practically endless loop on WOR, channel 9 out of Secaucus NJ. I’ve seen the Corman-dubbed version countless times in my life. I didn’t see director Ptushko’s other Russian fantasies, but three of them ended up on Mystery Science Theater 3000. I suspect that’s where most people on this Board saw the film.
I finally decided to see the original uncut and un-dubbed version, and bought it on DVD several years ago. It’s better in the original, although several scenes are still cringe-worthy. But at least I don’t get the sense than Tsar Kalin want’s to get Moose and Squirrel as well as Ilya Mouromets.
