Word: ciannelli
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Conceived as a classic western about the pursuit of one of those bitch goddesses, Mackenna's Gold is manned by an honor roll of movie stars of the '40s: Lee J. Cobb, Raymond Massev, Eduardo Ciannelli, Burgess Meredith, Edward G. Robinson, Keenan Wynn. Together they pick the hambone clean in a search for the usual lost gold cache -before they get wiped out in the customary massacre. Left over are a Mexican villain (Omar Sharif), leathery Marshal Mackenna (Gregory Peck), one surly, burly Apache and two obligatory ladies. The blonde (Camilla Sparv), supposedly Arizona-born and bred, speaks...
...production is a highly intelligent animation of Ham Fisher's comic strip-or of what the strip was before it got "significance." In really brilliant style it strikes precisely the comic-strip attitude-the understatement of motion, the two-dimensional, parodic life. The villain of the piece (Eduardo Ciannelli) never peeks out from behind his leer; the heroine (Elyse Knox) is rich but unspoiled; the hero (Joe Kirkwood Jr.) is profoundly respectful of his mother, and as innocent as if he had never had a man-to-man talk with his father...
...M.G.M.) is an ingenious spy picture which engages in a lot of good-natured spoofing of the standard Hollywood thriller. Robert Young (sent to cover the war in Africa because he is a typical "smalltown reporter"), Reginald Owen (a Nazi Intelligence officer posing as a British Intelligence officer), Edward Ciannelli (an Oriental mastermind) and Jeanette MacDonald engage in a game of deliberately slapstick I Spy. Climax comes when the sympathetic vibrations of Singer MacDonald's high C tickle open a secret door into a pyramid, foil a Nazi plot to bomb a U.S. transport by remote control...
Miss Lane escapes too. Inhumanely dislodging a lion from her lifeboat, she reaches shore. But so do Mr. Ciannelli, the lions and the leopards. They track Miss Lane, pausing only to devour two of her party, right up to the village where Mkwawa's skull is tucked away (in a volcano). Next day with the help of the Sultan (who has a strong German accent) Miss Lane traps enough animals to stock a zoo. It does her no good because Mr. Ciannelli lets them all out again the same night. There is another bedlam of leaping lions, snarling leopards...
...nick of time, James Craig lets the animals out all over again. Miss Lane gets the skull when the volcano erupts, explodes and buries Mr. Ciannelli. Says Tom Fadden, patting the skull as Miss Lane and he drop leisurely downstream a few minutes later: "Old fellow, when we get back from this, you and I are going on a two-week bender...