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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA Year: 1979 Rating: ** |
While it had been decades since the two Golden Age adaptations of the literary classic THE PRISONER OF ZENDA, it had only been four-years since the otherwise unrelated ROYAL FLASH borrowed the exact same plot-line, with Malcolm McDowell as a prince's lookalike marrying a gorgeous princess played by Britt Ekland...
Who was Peter Sellers' second wife, and his first Hollywood trophy wife while Lynne Frederick, his third (and final) marriage, plays the exact same role as the chastely oblivious royal bride...
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| Lynne Frederick and Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
Frederick was one of the most beautiful young starlets throughout the 1970's, specializing in horror movie scream-queen roles, and she doesn't have enough screen-time (unlike former PINK PANTHER ingenues Elke Sommer and Catherine Schell)... a shame since her one key sequence with husband Sellers has a semi-endearing/opposites-attract chemistry that could have built into a worthwhile b-story romance...
Instead, most of the attention's on Peter's dual-leading roles, like his infamous finale THE FIENDISH PLOT OF FU MANCHO (following his artistic swan song BEING THERE), another awkwardly unfunny Victorian-era comedy misfire that has otherwise tremendous looking set-pieces and costumes...
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| Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
Herein, the genuine Austrian-located castle, where Sellers' average horseman character is pretending to be the prince, is as gorgeous as any dramatic time-period epic...
But the overall characterization falls flat, mostly since Sellers plays who should be the funny/clumsy imposter-pawn in a serious and aloof tone, using what sounds like a monotone Michael Caine-esque working-class voice-impression...
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| Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
Meanwhile, as the potentially physical-comedy-inspired/accidentally-prone prince, he's mostly stuck inside a dungeon that, along with an Iron Maiden torture device, looks almost exactly like ROYAL FLASH...
Which is a far better movie since that complicated switching-persona-plotline only exists within the second act, flanked by more involving adventurous action/comedy elements that THE PRISONER OF ZENDA needed more of, and that sadly, character-wise, the legendary Sellers completely fails at... twofold.
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| Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Elke Sommer and Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Elke Sommer and Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Elke Sommer and Peter Sellers in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Catherine Schell in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Peter Sellers and Lionel Jeffries in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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| Lynne Frederick in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA |
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Graham Stark and John Rhys Davies in THE PRISONER OF ZENDA
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