Cornel Wilde should be awarded an "E" for effort in The Sword of Lancelot, a gabby, murkily photographed, and surprisingly bloody King Arthurer from 1962. Wilde as Lancelot sports a dandy little French accent that reminded me of the guy in the tower in Monty Python's The Holy Grail while he fights for the king, until he gets all gushy over the lovely Jean Wallace as Guinevere.
There is quite a bit of long-looking and love-talking and smooching between the real-life couple (and a tightly shot post-coital embrace with the two drippy and funky; boy, what did the folks at the Production Code think of that?), but after a good while, you're starting to grumble at the screen to GET ON WITH IT, whatever it might be.
The battles swing from the hokey to the excitingly bloody. You don't see many guys get their heads split down the middle in American movies in 1962, and Wilde does stage a couple of well-thought-out sequences, so there is some benefit to sitting through the kiss-kiss to get to the clang-clang.
The whole Arthurian legend is such an appealing story that even though Wilde has two strikes against him--a budget equivalent to pocket change (the film quality is so bad, I honestly checked my glasses to see if they needed cleaning) and the fact that most everyone involved looks a good generation too old for the story--he still brings some real love and passion to the screen.
Which is why The Sword of Lancelot should be taken at face value, and even though Jean Wallace is pushing forty in the picture (too mature for a maiden), all I can say is, "What a face!"
