Title

The Golden Arrow

Aka

La Freccia d'oro (Lav) - L'arciere delle Mille e una notte (Ita)

Director

Antonio Margheriti (Anthony Dawson)

Story by

Augusto Frassinetti

Giorgio Prosperi 

Bruno Vailati 

Filippo Saint Just

Screenwriters

Augusto Frassinetti

Giorgio Prosperi 

Bruno Vailati 

Filippo Saint Just

Photography by

Gabor Pogany

Art Director

Flavio Mogherini

Editor

Mario Serandrei

Music by

Mario Nascimbene

Cast

Tab Hunter

Role

Hassan

Rossana Podestà

Yamila

Dominique Boschero

Mario Feliciani

Raktiar

Giustino Durano

Renato Baldini

Umberto Melnati

Story

The ancient city of Damascus. The vizier of that city has organized a tournament in order to find a husband for his ward, Princess Jamila. The challenge involves firing the golden arrow from a mythical bow through a series of portals to a target some distance away. So far three suitors, princes from other kingdoms, have agreed to the challenge. Each attempts to pull back the bow to release the arrow but find they are unable to do so.

A stranger, who has been watching the proceedings from the crowd steps forward, identifies himself as the Prince from the “Islands of Flame” and asks to be allowed to attempt to fire the arrow. The vizier agrees.  In fact the stranger is the leader of a gang thieves, his real name Hassan, intent on robbing those attending the tournament. On being accepted to take the challenge, he climbs up onto podium where the last contestant, the Prince of Bassora, throws down the bow and arrow in disgust. To Hassan, and everyone else’s amazement, he effortlessly fires the bow and hits the target. The arrow then disappears and returns to his hands, while the Bassoran prince accuses him of being a fraud. At this point, Hassan’s men make their move, causing a riot, under cover of which they steal everything they can find, whereupon the arrow disappears from their leader’s hands. During the turmoil, Jamila is kidnapped by the gang, for the purpose of securing a large ransom, and taken to the gang’s hideout in an oasist. Later, at the camp, the fate of the Princess is being discussed by Hassan and his men who eventually decide to demand her weight in precious jewels. On entering the tent where the hostage is being held, Hassan discovers that she has been listening to every word of the discussion about her, and provides him with exact details of her weight, both clothed and unclothed.

The leader of the robbers is immediately struck by Jamila’s beauty and her feistiness. Following his conversation with her, Hassan begins to have second thoughts about holding the Princess to ransom. That night, he helps her escape from the camp, an act witnessed by his erstwhile companions who give chase.  Hassan and Jamila eventually stop to rest at a watering hole, where they nearly run into a group of the vizier’s guards, from whom they overhear that a reward has been offered, dead or alive for the leader of the robbers. The other gang members are searching the desert for Hassan when they encounter the guards, whom they believe they have been betrayed to by their former leader, and quickly scatter. The Princess and Hassan reach the outer walls of Damascus, where he buys some food and drink from a stall holder, paying for it with a stolen ring. The ring is discovered by a city guard who raises the alarm when the vendor tells him how she obtained it. Inside the city gates, Hassam and Jamila kiss their goodbyes and he makes his way to the outside, only to be captured almost immediately. The vizier personally interrogates Hassam, and is extremely curious, in equal measures, about both his background and the star-like tattoo on his arm. He is told that the tattoo is in fact a birthmark and that he has very little knowledge of his earlier life, only that he was orphaned and brought up by bandits. Dissatisfied with any of the answers he has heard, the vizier has his captive taken to the dungeons, where he will be placed in a chamber that is to be flooded. Meanwhile, the Princess asks her advisor if anything can be done to save Hassan. He replies that only Allah can help him now. Left alone, she looks into the night sky and prays to the deity. After a while, three stars are seen to drop from the heavens and materialize on Earth as three genies…

Curiosity

Review by: Iain McLachlan

Along with Mario Bava (La Maschera del Demonio, 1960) and Riccardo Freda (L’Orrible Segeto del Dr Hichcock, 1962), Antonio Margheriti is considered one of the founding fathers of Italian fantastic cinema. He really established himself with a series of science fiction movies that ran throughout the 1960s, beginning with the 1960 production Space Men (directed under the pseudonym Anthony Daisies), and including titles like Il Pianeta degli Uomini Spenti (1961) and I Criminali della Galassia (1965), as the more common Anthony M. Dawson, but proved capable of working in almost any popular genre from the 60s as required, including gothic horror (Danza Macabra, 1963), peplum (Urus, il Terrore de Kirghisi, 1964) and gialli (Nude…si muore, 1968).

The movie under review here, La Freccia d’Oro (aka: The Golden Arrow), is a notable work in Margheriti’s canon in two respects, firstly that it marks one of his very few ventures into outright fantasy filmmaking, and secondly, it appears to be his only work as a director to be credited under his real name.

REVIEW

The boom in the uniquely Italian film genre known as peplums, or “sword and sandal” epics, that appeared in the late 1950s, following the massive international success of Le Fatiche di Ercole/Hercules (1957), coincided with a resurgence of interest in Arabian Nights-type fantasies, following the appearance of Ray Harryhausen’s The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958).  Since the peplums and mythological adventures both contain elements common to each other, it was perhaps inevitable that the studios behind the former, which had already proved to be extremely flexible in introducing material from other genres such as horror (Ercole al Centro della Terra 1961) and science fiction (Il Gigante di Metropolis 1961), would branch out into the latter, resulting in works like Henry Levin’s La Meraviglie di Aladino (The Wonders of Aladdin) and Arthur Lubin and Bruno Vailati’s Il Ladro di Bagdad (The Thief of Baghdad) both 1961, the latter starring the figure most associated with peplum cinema, former “Mr Universe” Steve Reeves.

Il Ladro di Bagdad was successful enough for its American distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, to invest in a follow-up featuring large pieces of the same generic material along with some of the production’s creative talent.  However, instead of hiring one of Reeves muscle bound contemporaries, such as Reg Park (Ercole alla Conquista di Atlantide 1961) or Alan Steel/Sergio Ciani (Maciste e la Regina di Samar 1964) as their leading man, they opted for former Hollywood teen heartthrob Tab Hunter. The choice of Hunter as the star of La Freccia d’Oro provides some indication as the tone and content of the completed work.

Hunter’s image as a lightweight leading man, with a large female following, has been taken on board by the movie’s screenwriting team with the result that instead of highlighting the fantastical elements inherent in the material, emphasis is instead placed on the romantic entanglements of the hero, in particular the burgeoning relationship between him and the Princess (Rossana Podesta, La Vergine di Norimberga 1963).

While Podesta, a veteran of Italian peplum and historical dramas since she came to international attention in Robert Wise’s Helen of Troy (1955), makes for a vivacious figure, with a real emotional fire within her, as the object of the hero’s desire, Hunter remains bland, though certainly likeable, and so the romantic interludes between them never really catches the imagination of the audience.  Also while director Margheriti does treat the material with the required lighter tone, he fail to stop these scenes slowing the pace of the narrative. The lighter tone extends, in fact, to the vast majority of the rest of the movie, with the few fight and action scenes virtually bloodless, involving much acrobatic activity that frequently borders on slapstick.  In addition to exploiting Hunter’s image as the lightweight leading man, the makers also appear to be aiming to capture the younger audience which had been following his career as a successful pop star.

Tellingly, in terms of content and tone, Margheriti’s film seems to owe a great deal to an earlier generation of Arabian Nights fantasy pictures from the 1940s and 1950s that followed in the wake of Alexander Korda’s seminal epic The Thief of Baghdad (1940), a major influence on the work of Ray Harryhausen.  The main feature of these movies, typified by the likes of John Rawlins’ Arabian Nights (1942), Arthur Lubin’s Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944), and Ted Tetzlaff’s Son of Sinbad (1955), was their high quotient of overt comedy and romantic material, along with a selection of song and dance numbers.  Given Hunter’s success as musical performer, and the overall feel of the piece, it is rather surprising that the makers did not exploit this aspect of their star’s career more fully, instead allocating time for only one short dance routine, at the palace of the Queen of Thebes (Gloria Milland, Goliath Contro I Giganti 1961).

What there is an abundance of is broad comedy, something which quite significantly in Margheriti’s canon, as evidenced by the likes of L’Infafferabile Invincibile Mr Invisible (1972), Schiaffoni e Karate (1973) and Là Dove non Batte il Sole (1974).  Here it is mainly provided by the antics of the three genies assigned to assist the hero, first revealing his true identity as the long-lost heir to the Sultan of Damascus and then leading him through a series of challenges to recover the fabled Golden Arrow, which he has lost through his continued criminal activities and general misbehaviour, and generally keep him out of trouble.  Much of their screen time is taken up with squabbling amongst themselves and having to chastise Hunter for his womanising and time wasting.  This is all rather tiresome, and will prove something of a challenge for even more tolerant viewers.  Particularly irritating is a running joke about one of the genies (Giustino Durano, Il Bang Bang Kid 1968) literally losing his head.

Other comedic scenes padding out the running time include the hero having an “out of body” experience and persecuting the vizier (to whom he is invisible) by tickling him with a feather, and later prodding him with a fruit knife, Hunter and the other two genies riding piggyback on the third (Franco Scandurra, Tempi Duri per I Vampiri 1959) as he uses magic to make his legs run at incredible speed across the desert, and the squabbling magic djinns rescuing Hassan from his dungeon by causing all the guards to fall asleep, with Durano stopping to drape one of the guards in his cloak to keep him warm.  The comedic material extends to the movie’s climactic battle, with the genies, riding flying carpets, magically commandeering assorted pieces of earthenware and dive bombing the enemy soldiers below, in the style of a war movie.  Milked dry of every drop of humour it may have had, this sequence at least shows some genuine imagination in its execution.  A particularly nice touch is proving the carpets with the roar of jet engines.

If the emphasis on the romantic comedy elements in the script proves something of a handicap, then there are compensations to be found in La Freccia d’Oro. Among these is the plotting between the vizier (Mario Feliciani, Goliath Contro il Vampiro 1961) and the Prince of Bassora (Renato Baldini, I Diavolo dello Spazio 1965), their aim to take over Damascus by having the latter marry Princess Jamila, while the former would actually govern the city.   More serious in tone than the rest of the film, the scenes between these two characters is tightly scripted and features two excellent performances from the actors, especially Baldini.  Also of interest are some inventive plot twists, particular one where Podesta manipulates her three suitors into travelling to the far corners of the Orient to obtain rare gifts in the form of crystal ball, a magic carpet and a vial of rejuvenation fluid, all of which, unknown to the suitors, combine to help her escape the nefarious schemes of the vizier.

Where the film really excels, however, is on a technical level. Antonio Margheriti had a background in engineering that led to him becoming involved with movie special effects units in the mid-1950s.  Regarding his own films he took a very “hands on” approach to the effects in the majority of cases, while still working on the creation of a range of effects (often uncredited) for other filmmakers’ projects, including Sergio Leone’s Giu la Testa! (1971) and Aldo Lado’s L’Umanoide (1979).  His particular speciality is considered model work, and in La Frecca d’Oro his talents are well showcased, particularly when the hero and the three genies visit a city which has been put under a spell by an evil wizard (Omar Zolficar).  At the end of this scene, Hunter dupes one of the genies (who are not supposed to use sorcery to assist him in his challenges) into dislodging a supporting stone in a mausoleum, causing whole section of the metropolis to crash to the ground.  This is a truly spectacular piece of work from Margheriti and effects supervisor Fernando Mazza, making use of elaborate and highly detailed collapsible miniatures, along with very creative optical work. Margheriti also shows himself to be completely at ease using process photography.  An excellent example of this occurs when, to allow the hero to complete the task set for him by the wizard, the senior genie (Umberto Melnati) arranges for time to literally stand still.  This is represented by the background being replaced by a travelling matte, followed by the whole image changing to monochrome.

Probably the most ambitious effects work involves the flying carpets seen in the film’s last act.  When initially seen they are manipulated by mechanical and hydraulic means. Later on, however, they are presented as flying across the sky, these sequences displaying a very high quality of optical effects, easily on a par with most Hollywood product of the time and with little evidence of intrusive matte lines.  Also, rather than shoot the carpets from a simple side-on angle, Margheriti shows them from a variety of visually interesting angles.  He also mostly succeeds in conveying the speed of the objects. Additionally, Marhgeriti proves adept at staging wire effects such as where the genies and Hunter are captured by the latter’s erstwhile colleagues and threatened with torture, with the genies magically use a variety of inanimate objects, including burning logs, to attack their foes.  Some of the other minor process work, notably a flying sequence, is rather less impressive.

A particularly striking sequence, mainly because it is so out of step with the rest of the movie, has Hunter stumble into the realm of a demon queen (Dominque Boschero, Ulisse Contro Ercole 1961).  In a piece of filmmaking that would not be out of place in one of the director’s horror excursions, the hero finds his escape from the underworld, blocked by a number of macabre burning, humanoid figures.  Very atmospherically shot and featuring superb full-body burn stuntwork, this is a reminder of why Margheriti is so fondly remembered by aficionados of European horror cinema.  Whether it should be appearing in a work like La Freccia d’Oro is another matter. While having problems consistently driving the narrative, visually the direction is never less than stylish, with much use being made of stylish tracking shots and elaborate crane movements, along with striking compositions that make highly creative use of framing devices and objects in the foreground.  Apart from those previously mentioned, material which particularly stands out include Hunter’s athletic escape from Damascus, over the rooftops and battlements of the city, the eerie journey through the city devastated by the wizard, the sense of weirdness about the place being emphasised by the employment of titled and hand-held cameras (along with an evocative score by Mario Nasimbene, The Vengeance of She 1967), and where the hero nonchalantly walks backward from the city gates only for a platoon of palace guards to appear behind him.  Margheriti and film editor Mario Serandrei (Il Castello de Morti Vivi 1964) also create some quirky visual flourishes, such as a spinning sphere dissolving into the flying robes of a dancing robber. Special mention should be made of the sound design by Mario Messina (I Tre Volti della Paura 1963), which although still in mono, proves to be very busy in the amount of detail concerning background and atmospheric noise that Messina packs into it, adding an extra layer of interest to the film.

Production values for La Freccia d’Oro reflect the financial involvement of a major Hollywood studio.  Particularly striking are the lavish sets designed by Flavio Mogherini (Diabolik 1968), with the emphasis on hues created by various precious metals, and very ornate decoration and ornamentation from Massimo Tomassi (Ercole e la Regina di Lidia 1959).  The bigger than usual budget is also apparent in the colourful costume design of Giorgio Desideri (Agent X 1-7:  Operazione Oceano 1965). A particular bonus for the production is the access to the very photogenic Egyptian locations that crop up throughout the film.  As photographed in the scope format by Hungarian émigré Gabor Pagony (Roma Contro Roma 1964), the ancient ruins, the River Nile and vast desertscapes afforded by that country add a real lustre to the movie, imbuing it with a unique visual quality that sets it apart from many of its contemporaries. The climax of La Freccia d’Oro features a surprisingly ambitious battle between the forces of the Prince of Bassora and a squadron of flying carpets, fighting it out in some very photogenic sand dunes.  While still relying too heavily on easy humour, the battle is certainly on a large-scale and involves scores of extras, stuntmen and horses, all well-co-ordinated by Second Unit director Ettore Fizzarotti.  As Ettore Maria Fizarotti, he later became a director in his own right, mainly in the fields of comedies and musicals. At the end of the film, Hunter and Podesta are see literally flying off into the sunset on a flying carpet.

Although eminently marketable in the US, La Freccia d’Oro actually had to wait some two years before gaining a release in that territory, probably due to regime change at the troubled MGM studio.

©  Iain McLachlan