Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Mjeteconer Just perfect...

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Rosie Searle It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

HotToastyRag Whoever saw through this B-movie and cast Paul Newman in his next role in Somebody Up There Likes Me deserves a medal. The Silver Chalice was Newman's first film role, after only a few television credits. He knew how stinky the movie was, so I don't feel bad in criticizing it.In an attempt to copy the success of The Robe, another biblical epic was made. Only, instead of casting people who could actually pull off a period piece (Richard Burton and Jean Simmons), this film starred Paul Newman and Virginia Mayo. The film plays off like a bad community theater dress rehearsal, and don't even get me started on Mayo's crazy eye makeup! Save yourselves. Even if you like biblical movies, the 1950s produced so many others you can watch besides this one. Watch Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, The Robe, or Quo Vadis. Just don't watch The Silver Chalice. I'm sorry, but with the crummy script, make-up, and acting, no one wants to sit through two and a half hours about a man trying to sculpt a chalice with the faces of Jesus and his disciples on it, and a bunch of bad guys trying to steal it.

kirbyskay2012 I saw this movie on TV in the early 1960s the first time. It is a mishmash of both good and bad, and is still watchable for a number of reasons. The Silver Chalice must have had a miserable production budget because some of the sets are ludicrously cheap, one set in particular (a stone wall) looked like it was drawn onto cardboard using a black permanent marker with a yardstick. So hilariously funny that it completely made me forget what was happening in that scene!And, speaking of hilarious, Jack Palance's performance was over-the-top total high camp. It was never clear if this was a deliberate move on the part of the director or producer or just an actor's ploy to steal every scene in which he appeared in this film. Not too far behind was the performance of Virginia Mayo, as his "magician's assistant", whose obvious job duties included prostitution as well. I think this was Palance's all time best performance, if only for the preposterous overacting. His Mickey Mouse Sorcerer's Apprentice costume and hairdo certainly did not contribute to a serious character role!Paul Newman was just really starting his career in movies, although he had chalked up a lot of time and experience in theatrical plays. He mainly seemed uninvolved in his character's role, and uncomfortable in the movie in general. He has been quoted several times that this was the one production that he wanted to purchase all possible copies of since he regretted this role more than any other. Not really bad, but he was probably suffering from the difference between live acting on a theatre stage vs a movie set. The script didn't help him out much.It was fun trying to identify the actors portraying supporting players in this convoluted story which was in reality fairly straightforward. It had the same overall cheesy and disjointed feeling of another overblown attempt by the old Hollywood Studio machine when it made another interesting stinker titled THE HISTORY OF MANKIND, which contained few starring roles, but a series of scenes populated by a cameos of a veritable Who's Who of Hollywood's plethora of film celebrities, mainly from the 1940s.I highly recommend both of these movies, if only to watch how the best of the film industry's intentions can go so publicly awry, regardless of casting and production efforts. Watch these two films and see how many famous actors and actresses you can pick out in the various scenes, while having a really fun and hilarious couple of hours along the way!

mark.waltz This movie is famous (or in-famous) for Paul Newman taking out an advertisement to ask people NOT to watch this on TV when it had its first network showing. I say watch it, because this is one of the best biblical comedies of all time, that is, until Mel Brooks gave us "History of the World Part I". And any film where Natalie Wood grows up to be Virginia Mayo can't be serious, as in "Shirley you can't be serious" and "Give me Virginia ham on one, hold the mayo."Newman comes off rather unscathed in this post-Jesus era epic (20 years after the Crucifixion) about a Greek Slave, Basil (Newman), who is sought by one of the surviving apostles (Luke) to create a silver chalice to hold the cup that Jesus drank from on the last night. Basil has rather a soap operatic history; He was adopted by a wealthy Greek with no heirs whose evil brother has no desire to give up any of the family estate to the son of a peasant. Basil is made a slave, but his reputation as a sculptor becomes well known, and before his evil uncle can have him killed to avoid future troubles, he is off to fulfill his own destiny.It all sounds fine, but the execution of how it is pulled off is one of Hollywood's greatest mysteries. Some extremely hammy performances by Virginia Mayo (forgive the pun) and Jack Palance (giving one of the best drag performances in film history!) add to the unintentional laughter. I can't believe this could ever be completed because how these actors can get past saying these lines without constantly cracking up is beyond me. Add on some rather strange looking set design that would probably work better in 3-D, and you have the most bizarre biblical epic ever made. Mayo, complete with really bizarre eye makeup that would have sent Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra barging the wrong way down the Nile, is one of the oddest femme fatales in a Biblical epic. And Jack Palance is so bizarre as the insane Caligula like magician Simon that you expect him to start doing one-handed push-ups while wearing his Riddler outfit for the final scene.

writers_reign For years all I knew about this turkey was that when it played on TV in the US Paul Newman paid for a full-page ad in the press urging fans not to see it. Boy, did he get it right. They really need a new category for this which can only be described as a Turkey's Turkey. Apparently no American director wanted to film it, even Bruce Humberstone didn't want to be caught dead behind the bullhorn on this one, so they got Victor Saville, a limey who shot several Jessie Mathews vehicles in the early thirties. The ploy, if you can call it that, centers around our old friend the Holy Grail with Paul Newman - in his first At Bat on the big screen, although he had been appearing on television for several years - playing a gifted Greek sculptor who is tapped to fashion a receptacle worthy of containing the Holy Grail. The action moves between Antioch, Jerusalem and Rome or, to put it another way, from Sound Stage #3 to Sound Stage #5 on the Warner lot in Burbank, because all the locations look the same. There's an interesting cast list, mostly wasted talents, including Ian Wolfe, Joseph Wiseman and Lorne Green but Jack Palance walks away with it - and he's welcome to it - as the magician who believes his own hype. I was barely able to sit through it but what do I know.