Bible Time Classics: David and Goliath/Joseph and His Brethren/Martin Luther/Esther and the King |  | Directors: Ferdinando Baldi, Irving Rapper, Luciano Ricci, Mario Bava, Orson Welles
Actors: Geoffrey Horne, Robert Morley, Belinda Lee, Vira Silenti, Terence Hill
Studio: St Clair Vision
Category: DVD
Buy New: $299.97
as of 9/9/2010 02:22 CDT details
New (2) from $299.97
Seller: inetvideo
Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 140,457
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Italian (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Discs: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Running Time: 412 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
UPC: 777966885094
EAN: 0777966885094
ASIN: B0002I84IU
Theatrical Release Date: December 14, 1960
Release Date: August 17, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
 bible Time Clasics David and Goliath May 8, 2007
Wilma Lee Maynard (Gainesboro, TN)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fast service. Poor Quality DVD but Considering the age of the movies it was well worth the low price.
 Joseph and his Brothers February 9, 2009
Barbara A. Powels (San Diego)
The movie was a bit dated but the message was very strong. I would purchase it again if needed.
 Movie quality varies March 1, 2007
TammyJo Eckhart (Bloomington, Indiana United States)
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
The quality of the four movies in this collection vary greatly in quality. I do applaud the attempt to save some of the cinema for future generations and I found these versions of three bibilical stories and one pseudo-biography interesting variations on their stories. You also get the chance to see some young fairly famous stars before they were very famous at all.
The movies included are:
"David and Goliath" starring Orson Welles and Ivo Payer
"Joseph and His Brethren" starring Goeffrey Horne and Robert Morley
"Martin Luther" starring Niall MacGinnis and John Ruddock
"Esther and the King" starring Joan Collins and Richard Egan.
 Poor sound quality. July 8, 2007
D. E. Garvin (Westminster, CA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
The biblical accounts are not represented with a great deal of accuracy.
Much creative license is used in the portrayals.
But the biggest drawback is poor sound quality.
Campy Fun, Scriptural Travesty February 2, 2009
Alfred D. Byrd (Lexington, KY USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Sometimes something that you expected to be bad turns out to be worse than you imagined. A case in point is the movie Joseph and His Brethren, which a theologian friend of mine told me was "the worst Biblical movie that I've seen." His comment did not prepare me for what I saw.
Let me put the film into its proper perspective: Joseph and His Brethren is a low-budget Italian sword-and-sandals epic from a time of innocence when we were young, and as such has all the excesses of such films, including the obligatory scene with dancing girls. Seen as such, the movie is fun in a campy way, especially if one is in the mood for some Mystery Science Theater 3000 dialog with the screen. As an enactment of one of the most beloved accounts of the Bible, though -- well, judge for yourself.
The movie starts out well enough with some strong chemistry between Joseph (Geoffrey Horne) and his little brother, Benjamin, and a cleverly done scene in which Joseph sorts out a dispute over the ownership of sheep by enacting a Martin Gardner mind-teaser on screen. The scenes in which Joseph excites his older brothers' jealousy are serviceable, if not great.
Things start to take a turn for the strange, though, when the brothers sell Joseph to Ishmaelite traders named Muhammad and Ali, forsooth! In Egypt, though, Joseph rises at once in the world as in the slave market he saves the life of his future master, Potiphar, with arcane knowledge of the medical practice of bloodletting. In Potiphar's house Joseph becomes even more valued for his ability to make the best wine in Egpyt and his innovative practice of making his masters feel better by flogging them with branches. I guess that I've missed these abilities every time I've read Genesis through, but, oh, well.
Potiphar, as played by Robert Morley, is an amazing take on the Biblical character. Vain, snooty, suspicious, yet trusting, scatterbrained, and challenging a turnip in the IQ department, he provides some great comic relief, as unlikely as such a thing is in a Joseph epic. One can understand why his much younger wife Heneth (Belinda Lee, who wins the best-actor award for the movie) is unhappy with her husband. After an unintentionally comic entrance in which she calls out "Potiphar!" in exactly the same tone in which Lisa Douglas (Eva Gabor) called out "Oli-vah!" in Green Acres, Heneth becomes the movie's high point. Vain and petulant, yet charming and intelligent (by this movie's standards), she cleverly manipulates the men around her so that she can be with Joseph, who has an unfortunate tendency to look like a deer in the headlights around her. Alas, my copy of the movie deleted the scene in which she tries to seduce Joseph, so I likely missed the movie's best acting.
Joseph goes off to the mines, and it's sad that "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" wasn't playing in the background for the cartoonish scenes set there. In a remarkably offhand way, Joseph interprets the dreams of the cupbearer and the baker, and eventually gets to Pharaoh's court. Potiphar and Heneth, in the meantime, exit the story in one the most over-the-top scenes that I've seen, even in a sword-and-sandal epic. It's a scene worth seeing all for itself.
As the author of Asenath's Tale, I want to mention this movie's Asenath (Vira Silenti). As a fiery street revolutionary, the baker's bitterly grieving daughter, and a reproachful wife taking Joseph to task for mistreating his brother Simeon, she stole every scene in which she appeared with word-and-sandals overacting. She at least made the film come alive in its later stages, and I wish that there'd been more of her.
Sad to say, it wasn't hard to steal scenes from this movie's Joseph, who, after a promising start, basically sleepwalked through the rest of the movie. There was some good acting when a dignified, but self-pitying Jacob was on stage, but the resolution of the movie was perfunctory, not to mention conflated. The same could be said of most of the movie's Biblical elements: they were touched on, but overshadowed by bizarre inventions, such as Joseph's defeating the Syrian army in battle with a Great Flood. It helped matters little that none of Joseph's older brothers stood out from one another. They were all the generic scruffy, bearded extras of all of the other sword-and-sandals epics.
Over all, I'd say that you might find Joseph and His Brethren enjoyable if you watch it as campy fun, in the manner of Plan Nine from Outer Space. Just don't expect much in the way of Biblical accuracy, or serious story. (All right, I could've stopped that last sentence after, "Just don't expect much.") If you want to see a truly good treatment of the Joseph story, though, run, don't walk, for the Bible Collection Joseph.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 7
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