FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Rexanne It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

chaswe-28402 Like another reviewer said, not quite as bad as I thought it was going to be. With this near all-Caucasian star line-up I suppose it couldn't be. Presumably having a summer holiday. Half the time I mistook Kenneth Cope for Oliver Reed. It seems to have been made as a sort of joke, along the lines of Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado. Not exactly Oriental. Was it racist ? Genghis Khan, the most tyrannical and genocidal maniac before Stalin and Hitler, comes across as the Lord High Executioner, a civilized, courteous and charming gentleman to the bitter end. Difficult to know why Omar kept sparing his deadly enemy. Needed him for the final show-down, I guess. Slightly farcical. Morley and Mason get despatched gruesomely but tastefully. Wasn't too sure of what they'd been doing wrong. Unpoetic justice. They seemed so harmless, even if Morley carried his aestheticism to inordinate lengths. Dandy fingernails. All the deaths were very discreetly handled, even if there were rather a lot of them. Off-stage. At some moments it seemed a bit like a Wild Eastern, at others like the Sound of Mongol Music. I haven't seen Lord of the Rings, but I imagine Michael Hordern would be dead right for it. Fixedly aimed at the under-14 market, I can't help wishing myself back in those far- off days. I would really have enjoyed it then.

bbaldwin7 While his former partner in Britain's Warwick Films, Al Broccoli, went off to make the incredibly successful James Bond series, producer Irving Allen was left to try and kick-start his solo career with a pair of last-gasp mini-spectacles in partnership with Tito's Avala Film Studios. Allen initially saw himself following in the footsteps of the Bronston-Franco relationship in Spain (just as it was beginning to collapse) but both his films, "The Long Ships" and "Genghis Khan", proved to be box-office flops. They did however introduce Yugoslavian locations to American producers and Avala had some success attracting film production dollars for another couple of decades."Genghis Khan" is a comic book version of the conqueror's life and if you approach it at that level, it is quite watchable. It is far, far, better than RKO's, "The Conqueror", with John Wayne as the Khan. While the star-cast of ten established actors is a waste of talent (all of whom look out of place in their roles and make-up), this is within the reduced dramatic ambition of what's being attempted here. The worst of the casting isn't with Mason or Morley, as a Chinese Mandarin and his emperor. That rests with Francoise Dorleac and her brothers, as the Khan's love and his three generals. They would have looked more at home at a Soho costume party. Dusan Radic's score is bombastic but quite effective. As with "The Long Ships", he has given the picture a signature theme which is memorable. Geoffrey Unsworth's cinematography is always attractive and the settings are colorful, though not sufficiently lavish. The budget- production shows in a Chinese city that looks more like a theme-park and should have been written into the script as a palace grounds. It's a dozen structures, running divider walls, a canal, large moon-windowed palace facade, and a two-hundred-and-fifty foot section of fortified wall and gate, sprawled across 10 manicured acres, but a Chinese city it's not. 2nd unit director, Cliff Lyons' battle scenes are very fast and effective and feature lots of running horse-falls that had been outlawed on U.S. locations, 25 years earlier. He and director, Henry Levin, were restricted to maximum day-calls of 325 extras, of which no more than 250 could be mounted. So, again and again, film editor Geoffrey Foote is forced to cut from wide-shots as the crowds thin out. This is a hard way to conquer half the known world. Whether they belong in the film or not, most of the cast appears sincere in trying to deliver their paper-thin character sketches without pretension, and the behind-the-scenes crew creates a handsome product, which ends up being a travelogue of Yugoslavian production locations. In the end, only Tito really conquered here.

elshikh4 ..The movie itself didn't answer completely that question as it was a lousy try to read the great side in such a character but in such very fabricated way ! Actually the whole thing looked like an imitation of the era's cinematic epics of the big production yet it seemed eventually more like a parody, especially with attitudes such as casting (Mason) and (Merley) as Chinese people !?? That to tell you the truth was pathetically comic !, and that strange ending which tried hard to remake (Genghis Khan) as (Alexander The Great) !! Anyway the famous screenwriter (Robert Bolt) said once "If you want history go read a history book and don't you watch a movie !" as movies mostly present the art more than the real history, however in here it's the bad weak nearly idiot kind of art. You can simply look at it as another adventure movie from the 1960s with some nice elements if only you forgot the names of the real characters, and their actors as well !

Wayner50 I haven't seen this in years, but I remember it has some exciting battles, some good acting by Omar Sharif, Michael Hordern and Stephen Boyd, some great acting by James Mason and Robert Morley. I guessing that none of the actors were Mongolian or Chinese. Historically inaccurate, but kind of fun, sort of like some of Erroll Flynn's movies, like "The Charge of the Light Brigade". In recorded history, Genghis Khan was a murderous, merciless tyrant, not the idealist he's seen as in this picture, just wanting to unite all the tribes and live their lives out riding around on their horses not being bothered by the meddling Chinese. Even with all that said, it has some spectacular action and some interesting scenes that do have some historical veracity.