THE PRODIGAL, as in “son”, returns, per the Biblical parable (Luke 15: 11-32), to his family after screwing up his life in wasteful misadventures. The 1955 movie reamed from the tale failed to return MGM’s prodigious outlay of $2,783,000, languishing at 46th place when the year’s tallies were totaled. One of the advertising tag lines shouted “Two Years In The Making! A Fortune To Produce!”  When prints & publicity costs were factored in the half-threshed yield of $6,400,000 (never mind the fully thrashing reviews) saw the studio taking a donkey-scented bath to the lyre-tune of $771,000.   “Bring the fatted calf! The fatted calf!”

Manhood arrived, Hebrew lad ‘Micah’ (Edmund Purdom, 28) puts off his impending marriage to a local maiden and scandalizes his family when he beholds the face & form of ‘Samarra’ (Lana Turner, 33), high priestess of the pagan goddess Astarte. After getting a gander he heatedly declares “I mean to have her.” This involves traveling to Damascus (ancient Syria gets a bad rap in this Israel-is-enlightened entry: go figure) where he runs afoul of its corrupt Baal-worshiping rulers and gives himself heart, soul and body part to the ravishing blonde bombshell (blondes in B.C. Damascus? Don’t ask—believe) and her palace of sin. As the script wheezed up by Joe Breen Jr., Samuel James Larsen and Maurice Zimm would have it “The air is rich and heavy with scent.”

Directed with proficient indifference by studio workhorse Richard Thorpe, the ponderous 112-minute morality lesson has a few elements that make it bearable but in the main fails to engage, let alone inspire (the general idea?) because, well, let us count the ways—(1) Micah is a weak and stupid dip (2) Purdom’s bland as unleavened bread, lacking gravitas in bearing or delivery (3) the dialogue is straight from Cheesebia, (4) the sets, apart from a cool statue of evil-emanating Baal, and the costumes, other than one of Lana’s, are either doofy or flavorless, and (5) it fails the basic test of a Bible movie: there’s barely any ahistorical action or sinuous dancing shoehorned in bring relief from the constant twaddle.

By Jehovah! Enough with the booing and hissing: saving graces—(1) in her introductory scenes Turner’s infamous strut-my-stuff costume is pretty hot, (2) sly ‘we’re-aware-it’s-junk’ line readings from Louis Calhern (‘Nahreeb’), Francis L. Sullivan (‘Bosra’) and perpetually bonkers Joseph Wiseman (‘Carmish’; he did the same in The Silver Chalice), (3) neat baleful looks from Neville Brand (slavemaster ‘Rhakim’), (4) suitable summon-awe music scoring from Bronislau Kaper, and (5) Micah/Purdom’s ‘desperate’ battle to the death with a king-sized rubber vulture in a pit full of human skeletons: truly looney toons, a hilarious high point of low absurdity.

Lana does what she can; that year she also adorned The Sea Chase (not very good, but a hit), and The Rains Of Ranchipur (dud remake of The Rains Came). For flash-in-the-Hollypan Purdom, the failure of this movie, on the heels of the maligned (unfairly) The Egyptian and flops Athena and The King’s Thief sent him packing back across the Atlantic and into a schlock slew of mini-epics.

Others who toiled among the Thespians, cast into the pit of silliness and in the case of the Hebrew dudes, festooned with enough fake beards to stuff a Nile buffalo: Walter Hampden, James Mitchell, Audrey Dalton, Taina Elg, John Dehner, Sandy Descher, Cecil Kellaway, Henry Daniell, Jay Novello, Richard Devon, Chuck Roberson, Marion Ross.

* Dame dishes—in her autobio Lana laid it on the line: “The Prodigal Son they named Micah, and to play him, chose Edmund Purdom, a young man with a remarkably high opinion of himself. His pomposity was hard enough to bear; worse yet was the garlic breath he brought back from lunch. My lines were so stupid I hated to go to work in the morning. Even the costumes were atrocious. They were ornate concoctions dripping with heavy beads, and the material was so stiff that I felt I was wearing armor.” “Well,” I thought, “I may be trapped in this picture, but I’m going to make myself as sensuous, sexy, and gorgeous as possible.”