Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

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Land of the Pharaohs (1955)

Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.



This is a big budget brightly-colored ultra wide-screen sword and sandal movie with thousands of extras and even more costumes, produced and directed by the great Howard Hawks, who made some of the best movies in classic Hollywood. But this is not one of those. It was his first commercial failure and led him to take a few years off. It's centered around Khufu, aka Cheops, (Jack Hawkins) a Pharaoh in 26th century B.C. Egypt who is building a tomb for himself, the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was the tallest man-made structure in the world for nearly 4,000 years. There are a lot of spectacular sequences that show the building of the pyramid outside and inside, and there is a lot of campy drama involving Nellifer (Joan Collins) as a gold-digging villain who becomes Khufu's second wife and causes his downfall. There is also a long sequence with Nellifer plotting to use a deadly cobra to kill her rival, the Pharaoh's first wife Queen Nailla (Kerima)


Nellifer plots with her bodyguard Nabuna (Carlo D'Angelo) and her boyfriend Captain Treneh (Sydney Chaplin) to kill Nailla. First she sends the Pharaoh away to hunt some treasure. Then she brings a flute to Nailla's young son, prince Xenon (Piero Giagnoni). She tells him that it's a magic flute that will do amazing things when he learns to play it, then teaches him to play a tune. Then the scene cuts to a snake charmer playing the same tune to a basket out of which comes a cobra. Nabuna tells Treneh that the cobra will always come to the sound of the flute, and Treneh tells him to bring the snake in a strong basket without anyone seeing him.


Next we see Xenon playing Nellifer's tune on a flute as Nabuna sets a large basket outside an opening to his room. A cobra crawls out of the basket and over to Xenon, raising up and stopping next to him. His mother Nailla sees the snake and slowly moves towards it, telling Xenon to keep playing the song so he won't turn around and startle the snake. Then she leaps at the cobra, grabbing it and falling on top of it.

We hear Nailla scream in the background as we see Nellifer and Treneh waiting for the snake to do its job. We learn that Nailla died from the snake's bite when a servant women tells the high priest Hamar about the incident. She thinks that the snake was attracted by the flute. When she tells him that it was Nellifer who gave Xenon the flute, Hamar suspects her and orders men to go question every snake handler in the kingdom to find out who brought the snake. Treneh tells Nellifer that and suggests that they get rid of the man they hired to bring the snake. Instead, she orders Nabuna to go assassinate the Pharaoh. This is another absurd example of a snake used as a weapon in a movie in an attempt to kill someone and make it look like an accident instead of a homicide. Releasing a snake in the vicinity of the boy, is a ridiculous way to try to kill his mother, or anyone. (How did they know she would jump on the snake in time to protect him? Most snakes will crawl away and hide before they crawl up to someone to bite them.) Making us believe that the sound of a flute attracts cobras was a good way make us believe the plan could have worked, but it's unreasonable because snakes don't have ears and cannot hear someone playing a flute. When we see a cobra raised up and moving around in a basket, it is reacting to the snake charmer's movement, not the sound of a flute. There must have been a better way to kill the queen and make it look like an accident. I can't tell if they used a single snake or more than one for the different scenes, but all of the snakes we see are live cobras. I suspect that there was a glass barrier behind the boy when we see the snake crawl up to him, to keep it away from him. Crocodile Scene


There is also a gruesome scene with crocodiles. Vashtar (James Robertson Justice) a master architect who was enslaved by Khufu to design his pyramid, and his friend, are permitted to watch the victory celebration of Khufu's soldiers. Then they are taken to watch a different event. Vahstar asks a soldier why the people and their music are sadder than they were at the other celebration. He is told that this event is for the men who were cowards in battle or deserted or failed in their duty. We see several men being led up to the top of a body of water full of crocodiles. Then we watch the soldiers throw the men one by one into the water where the crocodiles tear them to pieces and eat them. Capital punishment was brutal in ancient Egypt. The movie was filmed in Italy and in Egypt where there are lots of crocodiles, but we see American alligators in the water, so it's likely that this sequence was filmed in the U.S.