If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

In 1977, Harry Medved wrote an amazing book. First, he was only a teenager when it was published. Second, he helped to create the craze of enjoying bad films, as it was entitled "The Fifty Worst Movies of All Time". Third, it came out just before videotapes--so he had to, in many cases, go archives and view a ton of bad films to ultimately come up with his list. Now I do not think every movie on it is that bad, but I do think it's incredibly good--and his book made very entertaining reading. In fact, it was so entertaining that I have made it my life's goal to see all 50 and "King Richard and the Crusaders" represents the 49th film! To be among the last dozen or so that I've seen means that I have had to do a lot of digging myself to find these last elusive films. In the case of "King Richard", I had to get a Chinese DVD of the film, as Warner Brothers never released one in the US. The print is acceptable but what this really weird viewing were the DVD captions--which is often a problem with Chinese produced DVDs. However, "King Richard" is much worst than the usual terrible captioning by the Chinese. In practically every sentence, there are weird mistranslations that occur because they are either using a bad computer program or a badly educated Chinese person to do the captions. The examples of mistranslations abound but here are just a few:ACTUAL CAPTIONS (actual word first, followed by captioned words): liege-league, fancied-offended, jester-just, debt-death, Christendom-crescent dumb, seldom educated-sodomy.That last one IS a heck of a mistake! But, on the other hand, it sure made watching the film with captions a lot more exciting and unpredictable. Plus, on its own, "King Richard" is a pretty dull film.Now not all the bad dialog is due to crappy captioning. On its own, the film was pretty wretched. I loved when King Richard's cousin (Virginia Mayo) kept calling him "Dick Plantagenet". I also liked when one of the characters talked about "...killing him dead". Is there any OTHER way to kill someone?! And, throughout the film, the love scenes were just laughably bad--about as romantic as a flea bath!The film is supposedly about 'Good King Richard' during the Crusades. As a history teacher, the film made me cringe. It was accurate in a few ways but so much of it was just hooey. In particular, the Sir Walter Scott notion that King Richard I (also called "The Lionhearted") was a good and just man. In reality, he was one of the most vicious and cruel kings in English history--more interested in splitting open heads in battle than ruling his domains in England and western France. In fact, he practically never spent any time in England. Much of the time, he was out hanging with his male friends and slaughtering entire cities--even ones that surrendered to him! By any standard he was a blood-thirsty maniac--except, of course, Sir Walter Scott's! In this film, I laughed out loud when Richard was angry at a knight who "unjustly persecuted and killed unarmed Muslims". This was Richard's personal hobby in real life! Raping, pillaging and murdering all in the name of God--that was our beloved Richard!Even if you accepted the film's premise that Richard was a swell guy, I still thought his casting was very odd. The very erudite actor, George Sanders, played 'Dick Plantagenet' but was simply too fat and old and the thought of him being unequaled in battle seemed ludicrous--unless it's a fight to get the last sandwich at a buffet! Now I should talk--I'm not exactly svelte myself--but at least I am not playing a macho warrior. The story is a whole lot of nonsense about a conspiracy within Richard's ranks to kill him and wrest control of the crusade by some fictional knight. And, oddly, he was saved by a Scotsman and, of all people, Saladin--the Muslim leader himself! And, in the process, there were lots of love scenes involving Mayo and the Scot (Laurence Harvey) and Saladin (Rex Harrison)--none of which seemed to make any sense. Mostly it just seemed like a dull and clichéd plot that paled compared to GOOD costume dramas. In fact, aside from the horrid dialog, I think this was the worst thing about the film--even worse than its inaccuracy.So the bottom line is this--is "King Richard and the Crusaders" bad enough to be on a worst film list? Probably not. It's bad, but I have seen a few costumers that were worse...but not many! The only good thing I could see in the film (other than nice costumes) was Rex Harrison. Despite wearing dark paint and a goatee, he actually came off much better than the Christians in the film--who were all dreadfully stuffy and awkward. You could do a lot better, but it is good for a few laughs--particularly if you can activate the English captions.

Somehow King Richard And The Crusaders made the Medved list of the 50 Worst films of all time. I'm not saying it's Citizen Kane, but I've seen far worse. And until The Lion In Winter and Robin and Marian, we have never been given a true picture of King Richard I of England.George Sanders who also in his career played King Charles II, a monarch of a far different temperament than Richard is in the title role. The film is based on the Sir Walter Scott novel, The Talisman and takes place in the Middle East during the Crusades. As in the DeMille epic The Crusades which this bear a faint resemblance, The Lion Hearted King is beset with lots of problems, not all of them caused by the Syrian warrior King Saladin whom he faces in the field. Duke Leopold of Austria and Philip Augustus of France question his leadership of all the Christian nations, his brother Prince John is looking to seize his throne back home and right in camp, he's got a couple of fifth columnists in Robert Douglas and Michael Pate.Pate and Douglas put in action an assassination attempt in which Richard is only wounded by a captured Saracen arrow. Richard's loyal retainer a Scot knight played by Laurence Harvey starts hunting up the assassins. But in the mean time, a truce of sorts is called as Saladin, hearing of Richard's attempt sends his personal physician played by Rex Harrison. There is a romantic subplot going here with Harvey and a cousin of Richard's played by Virginia Mayo. Richard likes Harvey enough, but not to marry into the royal family, especially when as a royal princess, Mayo can be married off for alliance purposes.Sir Walter Scott was one of those authors in the 19th century who cleaned up the Middle Ages quite a bit and invested those bloody times with a romantic aura. He was never more effective in doing this than in his more well known work Ivanhoe. In fact Ivanhoe is almost a sequel of this film as it deals with the capture of Richard by Duke Leopold on the way back to England after the action in this film is concluded and the ransom for Richard demanded and paid.George Sanders and Robert Douglas were both in the screen version of Ivanhoe that MGM did two years before Warner Brothers did this film. Ivanhoe is a much better film, yet King Richard And The Crusaders does hold its own.When the Medveds wrote that 50 worst film book they cited a line that Virginia Mayo says which is "war, war that's all you ever think about Dick Plantagenet". In point of fact that was the thing uppermost in that very bloodthirsty man's mind. More truth than humor there.And you won't get much truth from King Richard And The Crusaders. Still it's not as bad a film as the Medveds would have you believe.

The problem with this movie isn't so much the hokey dialogue, the relatively cheap sets, and the slapdash makeup. The story isn't bad, but it never gets as gripping as Max Steiner's spectacular musical score suggests it should be.There are a few good battle scenes and a good jousting match, but only Rex Harrison (in absurd makeup as Saladin) and George Sanders (as Richard the Lionheart) give the film any substance. Virginia Mayo still looks like Cody Jarrett's wife in WHITE HEAT; this is a substandard performance for her. For that matter, Rex Harrison still looks like 'Enry 'Iggins, despite all the soot they've smeared on his face to make him look like a Kurd.This is a fun film, but I can bring myself to give it five stars, because it was somewhat boring. It's campy, but not campy enough to be enjoyable from start to finish.At least I saw it in a widescreen German print (in English); to my knowledge there has been no video widescreen release of this film in any format.

King Richard and the Crusaders is an entertaining movie, with plenty of action, nice costumes, some good scenery, and a fast-moving plot. Everything you would normally want from an adventure movie.However, the script is horrible, many of the actors are completely miscast, the actual story is pretty poor, and it has next to nothing to do with the Crusades. It is not Crusaders versus Saracens. It is Good Crusaders and Good Saracens versus Bad Crusaders. Also, they most certainly do not have a cast of thousands, looking like it has a very low budget.As a result, if you are looking for a historically accurate epic about the Third Crusade, you will be disappointed. Although it is not a great movie, it is underrated, being far better than a lot of other adventure movies, and is overall entertaining.If you want to enjoy it, simply do not go into the movie looking for an award winning script and brilliant acting.