While not nearly as good as Hal Foster's comic strip, this film is not nearly as bad as some reviewers would have you believe. James Mason makes a fine villain, and the action scenes are well directed by Hathaway. The biggest problem is that it is, after all, a fifties film, with all the good and bad points of the fifties. I am a big fan of the fifties, because it is the decade in which I started watching movies, but I am also aware that relatively low budgets and heavy handed censorship made even the best fifties films somewhat dubious -- e.g. A Streetcar Named Desire without any hint of homosexuality. Comparing Prince Valiant to most modern knights in armor films, I find it more fun than, say, Black Knight or Timeline.