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Producer Douglas set aside yet another $1,000,000 to light the publicity bonfires and warn the populace that "The Vikings Are Coming!" Reviewers all over the U.S. have been showered with plastic viking ships and savage-looking letter openers in the form of a viking dagger. Seven Norwegian seamen, lured by the hope of adding another Leif to the nautical history of the Northmen, are sailing across the Atlantic in one of the ships used in the film, and the TV cameras will be waiting for them at the docks. The opening of the picture was described by Douglas advancemen as the biggest thing to hit Broadway since asphalt—a "dual premiere." As thousands cheered and celebrities glittered among searchlights, the picture opened in two major movie palaces at once.
After all the todo, the reviewers seemed a little let down to discover that The Vikings was, as the New York Times phrased it, just another "Norse opera." In fact, it is one of the bloodier bores of the season, and the only good things to be said for it are that the scenery is nice, and the book, a 1951 breastseller by Edison Marshall, was worse.
The story gets under way with a rousing rape as Ragnar the Sea King (Ernest Borgnine) slaughters the King of Northumbria and has his way with the Queen. Her son, born in secret, is shipped away to Italy, but there's a fiord in his future. Ragnar's raiders capture the child and take him back to Norway as a thrall. Nobody knows that Ragnar is the boy's father, and Eric (Tony Curtis) loathes the old brute almost as much as he hates his half brother Einar (Kirk Douglas), who is Ragnar's legitimate son and heir. One day Eric flies his hawk at Einar's face, and the beast tears out one of his eyes—a scene that is especially effective in Technicolor. In reprisal, Eric is chained in a tidal pool to be eaten alive by crabs, but he calls on Odin, and the tide goes out.
Obviously, the god has preserved him for a better fate, and she soon appears in the startling form of Morgana (Janet Leigh), a captured Welsh princess. Einar drools by the barrel, but before he can sully her honor, she has fled with Eric. "Let's not question our flesh," he tells her, "for wanting to remain flesh." Thereupon he bends the oar for a not very merry England, where after interminable bouts of slashing and bashing, swilling and swiving, everybody seems to go positively berserk with happiness—except possibly the adult members of the audience.