The Prisoner of Zenda *½ (1979, Peter Sellers, Lynne Frederick, Lionel Jeffries, Elke Sommer, Gregory Sierra, Stuart Wilson, Jeremy Kemp, Catherine Schell) – Classic Movie Review 4653

Director Richard Quine mistakenly remakes Anthony Hope’s Ruritanian classic as a zany slapstick comedy with the tamest of results. Peter Sellers, however, puts a lot of energy into his two major roles of lisping rightful royal heir King Rudolph V of Ruritania (The Prisoner of Zenda) and his look-a-like cockney cabby impostor, Syd Frewin. He also plays the aged King Rudoph IV at the start of the film, before he is killed in a hot air balloon accident.

The slow, jerky pace, hesitant tone and lack of laughs in the lame script are major drawbacks, and Sellers’s wife Lynne Frederick in the key role of Princess Flavia doesn’t help matters. However, the appealing support acting talent has its obvious strong compensations, with Lionel Jeffries as Colonel Zapt, Elke Sommer as The Countess and Stuart Wilson playing the villainous Rupert of Hentzau, as well as Gregory Sierra as The Count, Jeremy Kemp as Duke Michael, and Catherine Schell as Antoinette.

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais’s scripts for TV’s Porridge and The Likely Lads were 100 per cent funnier than their lackluster screenplay effort here. However, the score by Henry Mancini is a highlight, gaining deserved critical acclaim.

It is Quine’s final film as director before his death in 1989 and it is also John Laurie’s last film (playing The Archbishop).

Also in the cast are Simon Williams (as Fritz), Norman Rossington (Bruno), Graham Stark (Erik), Michael Balfour (Luger), Arthur Howard (as The Deacon), Ian Abercrombie (Johann) and Michael Segal.

This slack parody is the wrong kind of satire, but Sellers’s next (and penultimate) film Being There (1979) proved the right kind.

Lynne Frederick married Sellers at the age of 22 in 1977, inheriting his fortune when he died in 1980, and this was her 15th and last last film. She married again twice, once to David Frost (1981-82), but died on 27 April 1994, aged 39, of alcohol abuse.

There are three important earlier adaptations of the story: the silent classic The Prisoner of Zenda (1922), the definitive The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and its Fifties MGM word for word remake The Prisoner of Zenda (1952).

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4653

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