SIREN OF ATLANTIS

Maria Montez

SIREN OF ATLANTIS (1949). Director: Gregg G. Tallas.

Lt. Andre Saint-Avit (Jean-Pierre Aumont of Carnival of Crime) is found in the desert, delirious, half-starved, wailing about a lost city, an evil queen, and a friend he murdered. In flashback he tells his superiors how after a sandstorm he discovered the lost city of Atlantis -- improbably hidden under the mountains in the Sahara -- where the beautiful Queen Antinea (Maria Montez) loves and disposes of one man after another, and acts cruelly towards her subjects and her slaves. Andre's friend is Captain Jean Morhange (Dennis O'Keefe), who can resist the queen because he's headed for a monastery anyway. Before too long, Andre becomes the favorite of the queen, and presumably does a lot more than play chess with her, but then days go by and Jean is nowhere to be found and the queen isn't calling for Andre ... In his novel "Myron," the sequel to "Myra Breckenridge," Gore Vidal wrote about a Maria Montez flick called Siren of Babylon, and it was probably this picture he was referring to. Not quite a camp classic, it immediately suffers from the fact that it works up absolutely no sense of wonder over this apparently marvelous hidden city, which doesn't seem much different from the kind of places you'd find in those space-babes-on-the-moon epics. Maria Montez is indeed beautiful, if somewhat heavy featured, but her acting is barely adequate. She comes off like a particularly vicious drag queen (not to suggest that most drag queens are vicious). Aumont is fine in an impossible part, and an almost comically miscast O'Keefe doesn't look particularly good in a mustache and goatee. Other characters in the film include Lindstrom (Allan Nixon of Pickup), one of Antinea's cast-off lovers; Cortot (Alexis Minotis of Land of the Pharaohs), an alchemist who had his tongue cut out by the queen; the tragic slave Tanit (Milada Mladova) who dies a horrible death; and Blades (Henry Daniell), the court librarian and philosopher who acts as a kind of butler or assistant and who cackles and belittles the men, primarily acting like the loathsome little cockroach that he is -- Daniell easily offers the best performance in the film. (Movies like this should offer some kind of catharsis, but neither he nor his mistress ever get their comeuppance.) Antinea has her ex-lovers turned into immortal statues. Michel Michelet's score is interesting if a trifle overblown at times, and Karl Struss' photography is fine, especially a sequence in which Andre sees the mirage of an oasis of rushing water in the desert. Aumont and Montez were a real-life married couple from 1946 until 1951 when the Spanish beauty (born in the Domenican Republic) drowned in her bath after possibly suffering a heart attack. She was only 39. Director Tallas also helmed Prehistoric Women, which starred Allan Nixon. It is much worse than this.

Verdict: Everyone should see at least one Maria Montez movie. **. 

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS

The imposing pyramid-tomb

LAND OF THE PHARAOHS (1955). Producer/director: Howard Hawks.

"Strange religion to deny a future to those who failed in the past."

Pharaoh Khufu (Jack Hawkins) has one main goal, and that is to see that his tomb will be completely safe from violation so he can enjoy his treasures in the after-life. Learning that many other tombs have been broken into, Khufu has the slave and architect Vashtar (James Robertson Justice) design and build an impregnable -- and clever -- burying place for him. In the meantime foreign Princess Nellifer (Joan Collins), herself turned into a slave, manages to make herself one of Khufu's wives, and is determined to become Queen of All Egypt no matter whom she has to kill; obviously power has gone to her head. But will she achieve her goal, or succumb to a much more ironic fate ... ? Land of the Pharaohs is a very entertaining movie, with a splendid lead performance from the authoritative and commanding Jack Hawkins [Ben-Hur]. Joan Collins is also very effective, especially in her early confrontations with Hawkins -- as are Sydney Chaplin as Nellifer's lover, Treneh, the captain of the guard, and Alexis Minotis as Hamar, the Pharaoh's good right hand. There's some odd casting in this, however, with Justice (who usually plays blustery characters in such films as Doctor in Love) adequate as Vashtar and Dewey Martin [The Thing from Another World] handsome and acceptable as Vashtar's grown son, Senta. (Hawks used Martin in other movies as well.) At times the brassy musical score [Dimitri Tiomkin] reminds one of a Broadway musical, and Hawks' direction is not as assured or inspired as it might have been, although the settings are always colorful and the movie has an elaborate production. There's a scene when some who have displeased Pharaoh are thrown to the gators. Believe it or not, William Faulkner was one of the screenwriters! Great ending! Oddly, the movie was a commercial failure.

Verdict: Perhaps not as fictional as one might imagine, although this is still Hollywood. ***.