The Conqueror

[Andrew]

Who is the last person you would expect to play the part of Genghis Khan?  If John Wayne was the first name that came to mind, you get a cookie.  Enjoy that cookie.

Click here to go to the Review

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

You did it!!! You took on the Duke at his most embarassing.   Great job on one of the biggest "huh?"'s in movie hstory.  Its only a blessing they didn't make it a musical.
-Ed

[somerandomguy]

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".

[sardu]

Well, that's quite the little buzzkill.   

[WingedSerpent]

I love the clip.  I don't know which would have been funnier: if he had tried to do an accent or the fact that he still talked like John Wayne.  I kept waiting for him to call someone "Partner"  or "Pilgram".

[Erskine]

This is the film that taught me the word "Perifdy"...

[Chris]

Oh my god! This movie gave people cancer!

[Intangible Skeleton]

So... This film killed John Wayne?

(In a far more literal way than when people say Street Fighter killed Raul Julia)



Damn.

[Flangepart]

Man, what a sad, sad mess.
Proof that even the best of us can cram a turkey into a resume.
Some actors, make a turducken on that concept...

[Andrew]

So... This film killed John Wayne?

Oh my god! This movie gave people cancer!

It's hard not to laugh at the insanity that cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan (apparently he chose the part of all things), but the evidence that the making of this film caused so much misery definitely brings you down.  It is a film that deserves to be notorious for more than one reason.

[Rev. Powell]

So... This film killed John Wayne?

Oh my god! This movie gave people cancer!

It's hard not to laugh at the insanity that cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan (apparently he chose the part of all things), but the evidence that the making of this film caused so much misery definitely brings you down.  It is a film that deserves to be notorious for more than one reason.

"[Billionaire producer] Howard Hughes was said to have felt 'guilty as hell' about the whole affair, although as far as I can tell it never occurred to anyone to sue him. For various reasons he withdrew The Conqueror from circulation, and for years thereafter the only person who saw it was Hughes himself, who screened it night after night during his paranoid last years."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/374/did-john-wayne-die-of-cancer-caused-by-a-radioactive-movie-set

[Flangepart]

Ya know, Yul Brenner could have pulled this off...his confident smerk would have added to the fun.

[Tartar Control]

Your review suggests you're a tad peeved at women in general. If it's that bad, there are alternatives, sailor.

[Andrew]

Your review suggests you're a tad peeved at women in general. If it's that bad, there are alternatives, sailor.

I'm usually a tad peeved at something, but when I am really annoyed I avoid trying to write.  In this case it was just fun to work on the relationship angle of John Wayne and Susan Hayward's interaction.

Besides, by this point I think we can safely assume that while I might find some parts of women frustrating, I also find parts of them fun.  The "sailor" bit amuses me, because I tend to hear it said online to me - but never in person.  Odd, that.

[Trevor]

  Thanks for the review, Andrew. 

My Dad used to tell me about this film a lot when I was young and it horrified me to learn that so many of the cast and crew had developed and died from cancer. He always said that the film wasn't so bad, it was what happened afterwards that was bad.

The other Howard Hughes film that my Dad talked about was The Outlaw ~ all he would say about it was "Great gazongas!"