| This movie, Columbia ’s response to Knights of the Round Table from the previous year, is filmed, like its rival, in glowing Technicolor and in “the miracle of Cinemascope.” It was based upon the comic strips written and drawn by Hal Foster since 1937, and was the first of three films about Prince Valiant. The second was an animated TV series that ran to 26 episodes in 1991, the second a made-for-TV movie starring Stephen Moyer (Prince Valiant), Edward Fox (King Arthur) and Joanna Lumley (Morgan le Fay) in 1997. The visual fidelity of this movie to the comic strip is very good (compare the still from the movie and the comic-strip panel, above), but the script is sometimes rather silly, and the director, Henry Hathaway, later tried to distance himself from the project. If you like corny movies, like old Tarzan movies or Flash Gordon serials, you’ll enjoy this movie for some of the same reasons. |
