After the Middle East and the South Seas, Maria Montez and Jon Hall found themselves in Europe, playing gypsies. The Technicolor photography was a big attraction for their earlier films, but not so much in this one – it’s a very black and white seeming movie, if that makes sense. Many of the support cast are normally found in black and white films – Gale Sondegaard, Nigel Bruce, Leo Carillo, Douglas Dumbrille – and the director, Roy William Neill, usually worked in black and white (including Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein movies). Indeed, he directs like a black and white director. There’s a gypsy number towards the end that’s just like the one in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man.
Maria plays a gypsy girl (cue some dodgy dancing) who catches the attention of nobleman Hall. The gypsies are persecuted by an evil Baron (Douglas Dumbrille) and his henchman – something which has extra resonance considering the persecution real life gypsies were suffering at the time.
There are some more traditional swashbuckling moments – Hall represents the king, the baddies are rogue nobles (Hall is investigating the death of a good noble which Dumbrille is blaming on the gypsies), there are escapes from castles with moat, shenanigans with bows and arrows.
There’s also a Western influence, with Hall chasing down a stagecoach at the end and the gypsy cavalry coming to the rescue. If you think it’s odd Maria would be playing someone as low-ranked as a gypsy, don’t worry – she’s actually the long lost daughter of a noble. (NB and even though the gypsies ride off at the end, as if they’re not going to be hanging around in future scabbing off her)
Some guy called Peter Coe is billed above the title with Montez and Hall – presumably he stepped into a role meant for Sabu (who had enlisted). He’s this lunkish sort of actor, not bad looking but the type of guy who normally played suspects in the Saint movies, or members of gangs. It’s a shame this role isn’t played by Turhan Bey – I never thought I’d write those words, but Bey carried a sense of menace even in his sympathetic performances which would have added an extra dimension to this part. He does get a death scene at the end, but it would have meant a bit more had he been given a bit more character to play with.
If you found it odd that Richard Brooks worked on the script for White Savage and Cobra Woman, this one was co-written by James Cain. There is a clever bit where the gypsies get Hall away from the authorities by conking him on the head and dressing him as a clown.
Maria has a good moment when Dumbrille threatens to brand her and she reveals her bare shoulder and looks at him defiant as if to go, “get stuck in, then”. Dumbrille is a strong villain, smart and human (he loves Maria’s beauty) and he gets a neat death scene, impaling himself on an arrow by walking backwards while Hall watches. (NB Hall rarely got to kill the baddie in these films, either they walked backwards and impaled themselves or the work was done by an exploding volcano or a friend of Hall’s).
This is okay, but it lacks that special zing of madness, camp and colour that marked the first four Hall-Montez films. Those early movies really belonged to Hall and Montez, this one feels as though they could easily star Cornel Wilde and Patricia Medina, or some other combination.
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