- Actors: Jack Hawkins, Joan Collins, Dewey Martin, Alex Minotis, James Robertson Justice
- Directors: Howard Hawks
- Writers: Harold Jack Bloom, Harry Kurnitz, William Faulkner
- Producers: Howard Hawks, Arthur Siteman, Chuck Hansen
- Format: NTSC
- Number of tapes: 1
- MPAA Rating:
- Studio: Warner
- VHS Release Date: April 13 1994
- Run Time: 106 minutes
- Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
- ASIN: 6302354110
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #8,831 in Video (See Top 100 in Video)
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Most helpful customer reviews
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dry Gulch,
By A Customer
This review is from: Land of the Pharoahs (VHS Tape)
Here's a case of a serious mismatch between a director and his material. As interested as the great Howard Hawks might have been in Egyptian history, he should have had enough self-awareness at age 60 to know the story just didn't suit his style. The result is a laborious and unconvincing tale, stretched over 20 years, about the building of the Great Pyramid. The basic concept is that the real burial chamber of the late Cheops has never been discovered because it was cleverly concealed by a hydraulic system built into the pyramid. Some of the history worked into the story has now been refuted by archeologists, such as the idea that people were forced to work on the building. One of the first things to go when a director gets older is his sense of pacing and you begin to see that here for Hawks. Several of the players are seriously miscast, including Joan Collins, who deserved to be buried alive in the last scene for this performance, and Hawks contract player Dewey Martin, a perennial stiff. James Robertson Justice redeems it a little with a dignified performance and Jack Hawkins brings real likeability to the role of an absolute despot; not easy.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A DVD would be wonderful!!,
By
This review is from: Land of the Pharoahs (VHS Tape)
The heading to my message basically says it all. We are in desperate need of a special edition, anamorphic widescreen version of this classic film on DVD. Stay away from the Korean knockoffs that are out there on the internet. They , for some reason, have cut off the opening score, as well as the score during the closing credits. We need a legal version!
3.0 out of 5 stars
Deserves a 2nd look,
This review is from: Land of the Pharoahs (VHS Tape)
Jack Hawkins rules the world as the great Pharaoh, Cheops. Returning home at the outset of the film from a monumentally victorious military campaign, he settles in to his next big project - a pyramid in which he and his riches will be sealed from the outside world once he's finished in this one. This pharaoh, we quickly learn, has spent too much to acquire his riches to just give them to another generation. Immediately dissatisfied with his own architects, he turns to the most brilliant of the slaves taken on his last campaign to design a truly impregnable and monumental crypt. The story parallels the life of Pharaoh and the building of the pyramid. We see slaves taking to the labor with effort, though time and the lash soon erode that. As the pyramid grows, smaller stones are required, but they have to go up higher, and Egypt's quarries are approaching exhaustion. Worse, the country is running out of food to pay for its slaves. Instead, Egypt begins extorting riches from other countries - a strategy that backfires when Cyprus sends the sultry Nellifer (Joan Collins) as a tribute. Nellifer steals the heart of the already married Pharaoh and, becoming his second wife, schemes after his throne. In the end, which I won't give away, we find the evil Nellifer undone by greed as the Pharaoh had been. It's not a terribly ironic end, but the film plays it well.So why not five stars? The talent was there -Hawks and Hawkins on opposite sides of the camera, Faulkner on the script, and even a very young Joan Collins as Nellifer - but something's missing. Despite the epic scope, the story never rises above that of a greedy king and his money. There are no massive battle scenes (and with the victorious return at the movie's beginning, it's hard to avoid the idea that we've already missed the best part of the movie), and the plot (which covers years) never shows its arc. We know at the outset that Hawkins' king will be undone by his greed (the sage Vashtar tells this to the king's face) and the wise Hamar seems to have no role except to curb Pharaoh's avarice. The dialog, despite legend, actually rises above hokum (Faulkner reportedly had to apologize for his script, claiming he had no idea how a Pharaoh talked; Yul Brenner never had to use that excuse) though the lack of plot only highlights plot holes and gaps that a more dynamic story would have hidden. While "Land" isn't the cheese-fest that fans have claimed it to be, it's not as serious a story as "The Egyptian".
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