(Review originally written at 16 November 2007)
This movie is nothing too great, it's just some good old fashioned entertainment.
The movie has a decent adventurous story that features all of the needed ingredients. It features the search for a treasure, rivaling parties and of course a fair maiden. It's no swashbuckler but it's not like it's a boring movie or anything. It's fast paced and always moving. It also features some nice action and battle sequences. Especially once the Vikings reach the land of the Moors, who are under the command of no one less than Sidney Poitier.
When you think of Sidney Poitier you just don't think of a movie such as this one. He plays a sort of over-the-top villainous role and I bet he had a lot of fun doing so. But no, non of the actors give their finest performance out of their career but that is of course customary for a movie such as this, that is purely made for entertainment and not to sweep any awards or anything.
It's a good looking movie with convincing sets and costumes and of course the unavoidable miniature effects. Especially for 1964 standards, this movie is fairly grand and expensive looking.
There are not made that many adventurous entertaining movie about Vikings in the first place, so in that regard this movie is already something different and special from other entertaining adventurous genre movies. No doubt that the bad, brutal, barbaric kind of reputation of the Vikings in history is the reason why Hollywood has never really had the guts to make lots of more entertaining movies about them.
It's above all a fun entertaining to watch. Hard to understand why this movie isn't any better known or appreciated. The movie succeeds at what it tries to achieve and it certainly is not worse than similar genre movies from the same period.
7/10
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