Elissa Landi as Antiope in THE WARRIOR'S HUSBAND (1933)
Yesterday I got a copy of this 'lost' film and watched most of it for the first time. I need more time to give a complete overview of it but needless to say I'm besides myself. This movie is considered 'lost'. One known copy happens to be at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The copy I got is a bootleg. It's not very good but it's good enough to see how lush the production is. In a pristine state, the movie must be beautiful to look at. The story centers on Amazons and we see how Amazons live, in massive buildings, with throngs of marching female warriors. In this society, men stay home to take care of the kids while the women go to war and are warriors. It's fun to watch (something that's rarely shown in movies) and Theseus (David Manners) enters the story and it becomes a comedy of the sexes, a pre-code one at that. It reminds me of COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN (1960) with Rod Taylor, Ed Fury and Gianna Maria Canale. It's original runtime is only 75 minutes long but the bootleg is missing 15 minutes so it's only an hour long. 55 minutes of the movie plus the ending with closing credits. Originally, this was a successful play starring Katherine Hepburn. It was eventually adapted into a musical called "BY JUPITER".
I'd like to thank the generous fellow who provided this gem.
David Manners as Theseus
Big sets and marching warriors (below) abound in this production
The marching Amazons start dancing in a Charleston-style footwork.
Greek men captured by Amazons, chained and paraded as prize.
1 comment:
It is so odd that this became a lost movie as I distinctly remember seeing it on TV up until my teens. I always assumed it wasn't shown anymore because of rights problems with the play and then, somewhere along the line, it went missing entirely. Another movie they used to show on TV regularly was The Boys of Syracuse.
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