2hotFeature one of my absolute favorites!

Lancoor A very feeble attempt at affirmatie action

Dirtylogy It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Zandra The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

edwagreen John Wayne as Genghis Khan? Forget it. The Duke comes out more like a gunslinger than the Mongolian firebrand.An absolutely awful production and it's just too bad that so many in the cast succumbed to the effects of radiation testing nearby where the film was shot.After the best ever performance as Lillian Roth in "I'll Cry Tomorrow," Susan Hayward comes off here as totally ridiculous. Agnes Moorehead, as Wayne's mother, is not good. Her same dress throughout the film reminded me of Edith Head's design for Judith Anderson, as Memnit, in "The Ten Commandments."Treachery and more treachery abounds here and one actually could use a score card in listing those betraying others.At least, Ted De Corsia comes across fairly well as the Tartar leader, father of Hayward, who had killed Wayne's father years before.

ma-cortes In the film , there is epic , mammoth spectacle , hokey historical events , a love story , camp dialog to spare , wonderful landscapes and results to be a failed as well a little boring film . At the time , 1956 , surpassed anything ever filmed before , including all-star-cast who were later stricken by cancer . Set during the 13th century in which the brutal warrior Mongol chief Temujin conquers most of Asia , Europe and the Middle-East . As Temujin (John Wayne , considered to be the silliest character of his long career) battles against Tartar armies led by Kumlek and for the love of the Tartar princess Bortai (Susan Hayward) . Temujin was taken prisoner by the rival warlord , a fearless leader called Kumlek (Ted De Corsia) and as punishment was forced to wear a large round wooden stock that severely restricted his movements but with the help of Bortai he manages to getaway . He overcomes all of his hardships to become one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known and now starts his quest to unify all of the Mongol tribes . Gengis gets big hits , but his old nemesis keeps appearing at various times in his life leader to a final battle between the two . As Genghis Khan, ruthless leader of the Mongols and sovereign over the vastest empire ever ruled by a single man, was both god and devil , not just in the Middle Ages , but for centuries to come . Temujin becomes the emperor of Mongols , the great Gengis Khan .This expensive epic film in familiar drawling fashion contains clichéd barbarian dialogue , noisy action , great production design , impressive battles and a cast of thousands . It was filmed near a nuclear test site, and the set was contaminated by nuclear fallout , in the Yucca Flats area . Over the next 20 years, many actors and crew members developed cancer . By the time 91 of the 220 cast and crew members had developed cancer . Forty-six had died, including John Wayne, Susan Hayward, Pedro Armendáriz , Agnes Moorehead, John Hoyt and director Dick Powell . The count did not include several hundred local Native Americans who played extras , or relatives of the cast and crew who visited the set, including John Wayne's son Michael Wayne . Many of the Mongol extras were played by local Navajo Indians , they did not wear any makeup . Miscasting by John Wayne and the results are unintentionally hilarious . But John Wayne took his role very seriously, went on a crash diet , however he regretted playing Temujin so much that he visibly shuddered whenever anyone mentioned the film's name as he once remarked that the moral of the film was "not to make an ass of yourself trying to play parts you're not suited for" . Colorful cinematography by four of the best Hollywood cameramen : Joseph LaShelle , William E. Snyder , Leo Tover and Harry J. Wild . Although the movie takes place in Asia, photography in Cinemascope was shot in California Snow Canyon, Utah, Hurricane, St. George, Utah, USA Escalante Desert, St. George, Utah . This sweeping oriental drama was backed by financially eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes and regularly directed by former movie star Dick Powell . However ; the box office failure of this movie was believed to be ultimately responsible for the demise of RKO Pictures studios . Dick Powell directed a few films such as : 1953 Split Second , 1956 You Can't Run Away from It , 1958 The hunters and his best film was : ¨The enemy below¨ . This was one of the final theatrically released movies of director Dick Powell who soon after worked exclusively in television such as Woman on the Run (TV ,1959) . Other films dealing with this historical figure are the followings : ¨Genghis Khan¨ (1965) by Henry Levin with Omar Shariff , Stephen Boyd , Telly Savallas , James Mason ; ¨Gengis Khan¨ (2005) by Edward Bazalgette and the best : ¨Mongol¨(2007) by Sergey Bodrov

sddavis63 It's a Howard Hughes production, which in itself makes this worth watching. Of even more interest, this stars John Wayne as Temudjin - Genghis Khan - as it shows that title character rising to power as Khan of the Mongols and ultimately a good part of the world. Wayne is a curious choice for the role. I've never found him to be the most versatile of actors. He plays cowboys extremely well and he plays soldiers reasonably well. As Khan, he gets to spend a lot of time on a horse and he leads a lot of Mongols into battle. Combining the two types of characters he plays so well, you'd think this movie was tailor made for him. The problem is that he neither looks nor sounds like a typical Mongol! Frankly, Wayne's presence here is unfortunately somewhat distracting. The story here isn't all that bad, and for the type of historic epic that was often made in this era, it's fairly close to the historical facts in many ways, but there's also a lot that distracts from the history. The romance, for example, between Temudjin and Bortai (Susan Hayward.) The romance was too forced and simply seemed unnatural for the context. There's also an extended scene in a rival Khan's court which features a series of dancing girls who seem to have come out of a Las Vegas show. That also took away from the credibility of the movie. The sets were all right but unspectacular and the dialogue came across at times as somewhat stilted (I'm not even really sure that that means but the word seems to fit!)Let's be honest. This is not by any definition a great movie - or even a particularly good one. It is, however, definitely a curiosity worth watching if you're a movie buff, primarily for the combination of Wayne and Hughes.

Alex John I first saw part of it on TV and saw it mention on a documentary, so of course I got to see the movie eventually, it doesn't contain any sort of historic realism but for me it's a decent, even good, watchable movie.The movie starts with "This story, though fiction, is based on fact." the only facts is based upon is that Genghis Khan did unite the Mongols and eventually defeated the tartars(which happens during the movie), but don't expect anything else, the actors don't look, dress or talk like real Mongols but I don't have anything with this as I consider it 99.99% fiction and don't expect realism. It does however have that romanticism of the age and from an action-adventure perspective, watching this movie wasn't a waste of time at all, in fact it was quite interesting.I've seen a lot of other movies who are worse(and still claim to be realistic), this movie doesn't claim to be real ,it's just vaguely inspired from real life and I for one did enjoy it as a classic action-adventure movie(with a touch of comedy here and there, intentionally or not), my vote for the movie overall would be 6/10 towards 7/10(because the story itself was quite fun to watch unfold). It's low rating is surprising to me, considering it doesn't claim itself to be historic but is fun to watch.