Review: Erik the Conqueror

In 786AD, the Vikings are battling the Brits, with Brit Sir Rutford (Andrea Checchi) greatly overpowering the Viking forces, eventuating in Viking King Harald meeting his maker in Valhalla. His surviving sons Eron and Erik grow up in different countries, Erik is taken in by Queen Alice, wife of British King Lotar (Franco Ressel), who unlike Sir Rutford, never wanted any blood spilled. Meanwhile, Eron stays in his Viking homeland and 20 years later he has become the new king of the Vikings (and is now played by Cameron Mitchell), unaware that his brother survived the attack all those years ago. Somehow, the duplicitous Sir Rutford has managed to become an important ally to the new Viking ruler (despite orchestrating the original attack), and he helps Eron launch an attack on the British, even kidnapping Queen Alice for good measure. Once Erik (now played by George Ardisson) hears of this he sails north to rescue her, setting up an inevitable brother vs. brother showdown.

 

Good-looking 1961 Viking film from director/cinematographer Mario Bava (“Black Sunday”, “Black Sabbath”, “Kill, Baby…Kill”) is largely a rip-off of 1958’s wonderfully blustery and masculine Richard Fleischer film “The Vikings”. Yes, certain elements are re-arranged, but there’s certainly nothing new here. As such, there’s no point in watching a good-looking but inferior version of a minor classic. Almost all of the story and character beats from that film are present here (even the use of narration), just not nearly as well-done, though Bava seems to have more funds at his disposal than usual.

 

The music score by Roberto Nicolosi (“Black Sunday”) is excellent, and the beachside battle early on is exciting stuff. However, with so little in the way of originality, and with a softening of the lead character this time played by Cameron Mitchell, there’s only so far the action and cinematography can take it. A dubbed Mitchell isn’t terrible, but he’s a bit bland and no Kirk Douglas. The best performance comes from Andrea Checchi as the British antagonist Sir Rutford, he’s quite solid. The rest of the cast fails to pop in the way Ernest Borgnine, Frank Thring, and James Donald did in “The Vikings”. It’s also very talky for a film with not nearly enough decent performers for that kind of thing. Despite some good and rowdy action, I got bored fairly quickly. In fact, the best action is in the final third and the film had already lost me by then, despite being a lot shorter than most epics. It’s awfully slow, and I’m not sure Bava knew what to do with this genre outside of the camerawork. If you do watch, look for the idiotic scene where swords are forged immediately before a duel. They’d break on first impact!

 

The only thing this film holds over “The Vikings” is that Bava is a better cinematographer than “The Vikings” DOP Jack Cardiff. Visually perfect, but otherwise fairly useless, unless you haven’t actually seen “The Vikings”. And if you haven’t seen “The Vikings” watch it instead of this anyway. The screenplay is by Bava, Oreste Biancoli (“The Ghost”, with Barbara Steele), and Piero Pierotti (a writer-director who seemed to specialise in swashbucklers and romantic adventures like Zorro, Robin Hood, Hercules, and Scaramouche) who all probably should’ve been sanctioned for plagiarism.

 

Rating: C