The Vikings

The Vikings. (1958) A few months ago I saw Pathfinder. Which was awful. Worse than awful, offal. Some reviewers mentioned that it was loosely based on The Vikings, which was apparently much better. They were right on both accounts.

We have a story involving a confusing British line of succession(surprise!) and brutal Viking raiders who hate these same Brits(though they seem to hate everyone) and kill the English king in the first five minutes of the movie. Ernest Borgnine is a good Ragnar(Viking king) and Kirk Douglas is shines as the handsome, agile but ruthless and womanizing prince. Their slave, and the man who is the lost heir to the British throne is Tony Curtis, with everyones love interest in the film being Curtis' real life wife, Janet Leigh.

The plot isn't that important to my review, but the movie is very well made for 1958, and IMO still holds up today. I was watching it on a computer that locks after 15 minutes of inactivity, and it locked on me three times, because I was just watching the movie. That pretty much never happens to me, so it's a testament how interested in it I was. Worth watching if you can ignore some silly old timey things like rubber swords.