From Amazon.com
If you have the slightest interest in the phenomenon called Rudolph Valentino, this terrific disc is absolutely the place to start. The screen's great male sex god of the 1920s had a mammoth success with
The Sheik, a slice of desert romance both exciting and completely absurd. Valentino plays a dashing "sheik of Araby" who rather forcefully romances an adventure-minded English lady (Agnes Ayres); if the story creaks with Victorian storytelling conventions, it also works. Five years later Valentino returned to the sands with his final film,
The Son of the Sheik, playing both his original role and the sheik's impetuous boy. More madness here, and a wild saber duel on horseback at night reminds us they don't make movies like this any more. Valentino's faux-exotic allure may seem curious to modern viewers, but squint hard and you can imagine the frenzy caused by the sultry eyes and rapacious grin.
--Robert Horton
Additional Features
A crazy 13-minute newsreel, "Rudolph Valentino and His 88 American Beauties," recounts a beauty pageant judged by the heartthrob. Winner: Norma Niblock, of Toronto. "The Sheik's Physique" is a brief scene of Rudy taking a day at the beach, and a newsreel on Valentino's 1926 funeral gives a sense of the hysteria that followed the young star's death. Newly minted music scores do an acceptable job of re-creating the musical approaches of the silent era, and
The Son of the Sheik has an alternate score from a 1937 reissue; it's pretty corny.
--Robert Horton
