Land of the Pharaohs

A flop in its day despite France's rhapsodic reaction, but a movie I've always loved even before its knockout finale, which even detractors admit redeems a lot. [29 Jun 2007, p.10E]

Jack Hawkins is convincing in the lead role, while Joan Collins does what she does best, playing a ruthless, self-obsessed queen with no redeeming qualities – but we can’t help but love her. Read full review

Joan Collins and her pointy bras are a hubba-hubba hoot. Read full review

Despite script collaboration by his friend William Faulkner, this is Hawks' hokiest movie, a stilted Egyptian period piece about pyramid-building and sexual intrigue with Jack Hawkins as the Pharaoh and Joan Collins a conniving temptress with a jeweled navel. Yet the director gives it real spectacle; it looks great. [13 Feb 1998, p.N]

They don't make 'em like Land of the Pharaohs anymore, but you wished they did.

Howard Hawks’s only attempt at a wide-screen blockbuster (1955), much disparaged afterward by Hawks and many others, is actually fairly awesome if you can get beyond the clunky dialogue (some of it written by William Faulkner, as well as Harry Kurnitz) and the campy evilness of the Joan Collins character. Read full review

When the viewing senses begin to dull from the tremendous load of spectacle, the script and Hawks’ direction wisely switch to sex and intrigue. Read full review

This lavish historical epic has plenty of campy treasure in it. [07 Aug 2013]

Howard Hawks admitted that he and co-scenarist William Faulkner never got the hang of how ancient Egyptians probably talked, but he produced a spectacular epic. [05 Oct 2001]

Although the script (by Faulkner, among others) gets stranded with the usual slightly wooden dialogue considered necessary for ancient times, the story moves along at a stately but never sluggish pace, and is scattered with lovely moments, most notably the grim finale when Collins gets her ironic come-uppance. Read full review

Hawks used more than 10,000 extras and handled the DeMille-type hordes well enough. The problems arose in the shooting of the small moments, the times when actors had to speak to each other. Read full review

Uneven, oddly distinguished attempt to examine the pyramid-building obsession of the Pharaoh (Jack Hawkins) and how it was affected by his second wife (Joan Collins) and his architect (James Robertson Justice). Some excellent sets by the great Alexander Trauner, much turgid dialogue and a score by Dimitri Tiomkin. [11 Jun 2006, p.18]

Joan Collins is the only person in this film who seems to be enjoying the fact it's a big camp mess. Read full review

While it is impressively sweeping in its eye-filling pageantry, this saga of the building of a colossal pyramid 5,000 years ago is staged on the creaky foundation of a tale of palace intrigue that must have been banal even in the First Dynasty. Read full review