The Conqueror (1956)

[Oldskool138]

My friend just made me a copy of this movie and I'm planning on watching this movie this weekend.  John Wayne as Genghis Khan.  That's priceless.

Has anyone seen it?  What am I in for?

[Oldskool138]

I watched this movie over the weekend!

I hope the casting director got fired for this debacle.  You've got John Wayne riding around spouting off vaguely Eastern dialog and wearing makeup to make his eyes look Asian.  Not only that, you've got a host of other (white) actors shamlessly doing the same thing...Including Lee Van Cleef!    This is one of those films you have to see to believe.  I was laughing my butt off the whole time.

Things I've learned:

Mongolia looks a lot like Monument Valley in Arizona
From now on when I think Genghis Khan, I'll think of John Wayne
White actors can play Asian people.  Just add some funny moustaches, orange pancake makeup and period costumes
Genghis Khan sauntered when he walked
There is just no need to have Asain actors in your Geghis Khan movie (Yul Brenner?  Who's he?)

Try saying these lines of dialog in your worst John Wanye impression and you can see what you're in for:

-While I live, while my blood burns hot, your daughter is not safe in her tent.
-Come and take me, mongrels - if you dare. While I have fingers to grasp a sword, and eyes to see your cowardly faces, your treacherous heads will not be safe on your shoulders. For I am Temujin, the Conqueror. No prison can hold me, no army defeat me.
-I feel this Tartar woman is for me, and my blood says, take her. There are moments for wisdom and moments when I listen to my blood; my blood says, take this Tartar woman.

What was The Duke thinking? 

[BoyScoutKevin]

Really, for the most part, John Wayne shouldn't play factual characters, unless he's directed by John Ford. He played Townsend Harris, the first American ambassador to Japan, in "The Barbarian and the Geisha," and though it was directed by John Huston, there is no fun to be hand in that film neither.

At least in "The Conqueror" you can have fun watching a cast that includes, besides John Wayne and Lee Van Cleef, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendriz, Agnes Moorehead, Thomas Gomez, John Hoyt, William Conrad, Ted de Corsica, Lee Gordon, and Richard Loo and Wayne's sons (Michael and Patrick.)

You can also have the fun of noting that while Dick Powell was a good actor, he wasn't much of a director, though--I must admit--he did direct "Enemy Below," which is probably one of the better submarine films out there.

[Raffine]

This one is infamous for having rumored to have caused the deaths of many of the cast and crew, including Wayne, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Dick Powell.

From imdb:
Filmed near the site of contemporaneous nuclear testing grounds, the set was contaminated by nuclear fallout. After location shooting, much dirt from the location was transported back to Hollywood in order to match interior shooting done there. Scores of cast and crew members developed forms of cancer over the next two decades, many more than the normal percentage of a random group of this size. Quite a few died from cancer or cancer-related problems, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz (who shot himself to death soon after learning he had terminal cancer), Agnes Moorehead, Thomas Gomez, John Hoyt and director Dick Powell. People magazine researched the subsequent health of the cast and crew, which it published in November 1980. By the time of the article's publication, 91 of the 220 members of the film's cast and crew had contracted cancer, and half of these had died from the disease. The figures did not include several hundred local American Indians who served as extras on the set. Nor did it include relatives who had visited cast and crew members on the set, such as the Duke's son Michael Wayne. The People article quoted the reaction of a scientist from the Pentagon's Defense Nuclear Agency to the news: "Please, God, don't let us have killed John Wayne".

Photographs exist of John Wayne on the New Mexico set holding a Geiger counter.

Eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes provided the financial backing for this film and later paid an extra $12 million (estimated) for every existing print of it from a sense of guilt - it was he who paid for the shipping of 60 tons of radioactive dirt to Hollywood for retakes (see above). He kept a jealous hold on the film, not even allowing it to be seen on television, for 17 years until 1974, when Paramount managed to secure the rights to reissue it.

Sometimes referred to as "An RKO Radioactive Picture".

[Newt]

It is priceless.  The Duke has some awesomely corny lines!

I had not realized that this was the film that was subjected to radiation exposure; knew there was one, didn't know this was it. 
Does this mean I should feel guilty while giggling at the work of those poor doomed people?  I hope not.   

[Oldskool138]

It is priceless.  The Duke has some awesomely corny lines!

I had not realized that this was the film that was subjected to radiation exposure; knew there was one, didn't know this was it. 
Does this mean I should feel guilty while giggling at the work of those poor doomed people?  I hope not.   

Nope.   Radiation or no radiation, this movie is funny.  Howard Hughes must have dreamt this movie up when he was in seclusion and saving fingernail clippings (among other things).  Lee Van Cleef lived to be pretty old...Although, he was pretty bald.  Maybe because of radiation exposure?  Maybe not.  Feel no shame in ridiculing this movie...it is probably the worst bit of casting since Ian Malcolm's daughter in Jurassic Park 2. 

[Scott]

Saw it many years ago and remember not liking it, but that was before I use to come to this webpage. The Conqueror must be viewed with my B-Movie glasses . After all......it makes all the difference.

[BoyScoutKevin]

I would also add, that this film reportedly caused the death of Pedro Armendriz, who--is said--shot himself, when he learned he had cancer.