Steineded How sad is this?

Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

MartinHafer "The Golden Blade" is an embarrassingly bad film. The most notable thing is that NO ONE belongs in the film, as it's set in ye olde Baghdad--but it's filled with the whitest actors Universal Pictures could find! They hired the likes of Rock Hudson, Piper Laurie, George Macready and Gene Evans to play Middle Eastern Muslims--and I wonder why they didn't also include Wally Cox and Phyllis Diller as well! Now had the only problem been the casting, it could have still been a nice little adventure film. However, the dialog and characters simply suck. No one talks like real people and the dialog sounds like a 12 year-old's conception of olde tyme talking! Additionally, the characters are amazingly one-dimensional. The worst is the anachronistic Princess (Laurie) who acts like a spoiled child...and a rather annoying one at that. The film is dumb and probably offensive to anyone from that region. I can understand why this film is relatively unknown today--it deserves to be that way.

dbdumonteil A bizarre cross between the Thousand and One Nights and the legend of KIng Arthur and the sword in the stone ,this is routine exotic story,saved by the two leads ,Rock Hudson and Piper Laurie.The latter portrays an outspoken princess who often leaves her palace to see what's going on in the town of Baghdad ,while a vicious VIP is doing very bad things against her noble father .Meanwhile,Hudson is searching the man who killed his also noble father .Both will discover they have things in common.Action-packed movie,nice colors,heroes , villains and a Greek merchant whose shop is full of bargains and of course a golden blade .

MARIO GAUCI Arabian Nights adventures were staples on Italian TV in my childhood; this (acquired fairly recently on DVD as part of Universal's "Rock Hudson: Screen Legend" set) was one of them, though I'd practically forgotten all about it in the interim. Not that it's in any way a memorable entry in the genre, and certainly not original – since this is basically the Excalibur legend transposed to ancient Bagdad – but a pleasant diversion nonetheless.Having watched two of the star's 'oaters' back-to-back (the other was SEA DEVILS [1953]), I can say that he was rather more at ease as an Englishman than an Arab (though he does well enough by the action required here, involving a handful of swordfights and even a jousting[!] contest – which he loses – for the hand of leading lady Piper Laurie). The latter – petite and vivacious – lends some freshness to the mostly familiar proceedings; a similar outing of hers I'd like to revisit someday is THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF (1951) featuring Tony Curtis, another then-rising Universal star who dabbled in actioners (read: potboilers) of every kind during this period.Anyway, the rest of the cast here is equally creditable: George Macready as the (typically conniving) Grand Vizier, who's eventually revealed to have also ordered the decimation of neighboring Basra (from where Hudson emanates); Samuel Fuller regular Gene Evans as Macready's incompetent son(!) – the old man wants him to marry princess Laurie in order to secure the throne for themselves, but he actually loves her subordinate; Steven Geray as the merchant who first comes into possession of The Golden Blade, and subsequently steers Hudson into fulfilling its destiny (that is, apart from supplying the film's comedy relief); and Edgar Barrier as the reigning Caliph (I've watched him recently in two other exotic ventures for the same studio, namely ARABIAN NIGHTS [1942] and COBRA WOMAN [1944]).The climax of this compact swashbuckler – running a mere 80 minutes – incorporates a bit of magic (and campiness) as the blade becomes entrenched in the walls of the palace; consequently, a host of muscle-men, inventors and sorcerers are recruited so as to try and dislodge it…but only the dashing hero is able to, the direct result of which is to have the column in question crumble and bury the two villains underneath it! By the way, director Juran would later helm two other (and far more notable) mythical adventures – THE SEVENTH VOYAGE OF SINBAD (1958) and JACK THE GIANT KILLER (1962), both of which had the added appeal of stop-motion animated monsters.

Single-Black-Male Having appeared with Lee Marvin in 'Seminole', Rock Hudson now needed a film to lift him out of the status of being the best newcomer to being a screen legend. Films like 'The Golden Blade' only padded out his c.v., but did nothing to lift his career.