The Prince and the Pauper

Produced under the same flag of convenience as the Salkinds had employed for their earlier pair of Dick Lester Three Musketeers films, this hid its status as a redundant remake (of a Warners/Errol Flynn romp of 1937, which cast genuine twins in the double-lead role) under the title Crossed Swords in America. Fleischer's anonymous direction and Mark Lester's lack of range (as the urchin/prince lookalikes) throw the weight of Mark Twain's cross-cut yarn of confused identities onto a series of lumbering star cameos (Heston as Henry VIII, Scott as a Cockney villain, etc). Princely sets, but a debilitating poverty of wit and imagination.