FIRE THE CASTING AGENT!
Fernando Lamas is the famed French adventurer Jean Baptiste Tavernier, who with his father has been tasked to cut a huge diamond for the King of France as a capstone for the royal crown. Gilbert Roland is the arrogant Baron Paul de Cabannes - who barges in and demands the diamond be ready ahead of schedule, or else! This causes the elderly Tavernier to miscut the diamond and shatter it to pieces. Now, Lamas and Roland must travel to India to find a replacement before the King's coronation. There in the savage Indian jungles, they encounter the Queen of Nepal (Arlene Dahl - yes, she really is cast as the QUEEN OF NEPAL!). After an action-packed misunderstanding with her guards, Jean and Cabannes learn that the pale skinned, red haired Queen of Nepal is on her way to Golconda to marry the Mogul (Sheldon Leonard), and that he has promised to give her the "Eye of the Goddess" - a fantastic rare blue diamond! Romance and adventure ensue as the two Frenchman accompany the Queen to her destination where they try to scheme and bargain to get the diamond for themselves, and learn that the Mogul is not at all to be trusted!
A cheap but fast-moving swashbuckler, The Diamond Queen features some the most laugh-out-loud casting possibly imaginable. Neither Fernando Lamas nor Gilbert Roland seem to have a drop of French blood in them (Lamas and his Ricky Ricardo accent particularly sticks out here), and trying to pass Arlene Dahl off as the "Queen of Nepal" is downright ridiculous. However, what some might consider to be a flaw actually strangely seems to help the picture as it keeps the whole thing light-hearted and amusing, which is important since what we have here is just a fun, low-budget historical farce where the actors have to watch where they swing their swords or else they might knock the set over! Thankfully, we do get some outdoor sequences with some pretty good action scenes, and Lamas' final showdown with the villain is actually pretty good. A film very indicative of it's time as Hollywood was trying to compete with television by offering a number of color adventure movies filled with starpower and exotic locations. It was a Golden Age for movies about pirates, the French Foreign Legion, Arabian nights, jungle safaris, lost cities of gold, etc. "The Diamond Queen" fits neatly into this category. While it might not be winning any awards, it's still certainly a good way to spend 80 minutes one evening!
REGION 0 - WILL PLAY WORLDWIDE
INTERACTIVE MENUS / SCENE SELECTION
1953 / COLOR / FULLSCREEN / ENGLISH / 80 MIN
DVD ART WITH INSERT AS SHOWN.
A GREAT COLLECTOR'S ITEM - AND A GREAT GIFT FOR ANY FAN OF CLASSIC FILMS!
PLEASE NOTE: THIS PRODUCTION HAS NEVER BEEN AVAILABLE ON DVD AND IS NOT AVAILABLE IN STORES. This is not an "official" release or copy thereof. All media came from public domain sources. This is a good-quality copy with interactive menus and packaging designed by myself. This DVD is boxed exactly as pictured above, and is brand new and factory shrink-wrapped. All screenshots are taken directly from the DVD. All files used in the production of this DVD are not in violation of copyright laws or guidelines.
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