The Silver Chalice (1954), aka the film leading man Paul Newman once took out a full-page newspaper ad to urge people to not watch during its first TV showing.
The plot is about a Romanized Greek sculptor named Basil, who is hired by Joseph of Arimathea to forge a silver reliquary-type covering to hold the Holy Grail. Specifically, Joseph wants Basil to carve the likenesses of the Apostles and Jesus into the silver cup.
Naturally, as a handsome young man played by Paul Newman, Basil is pursued by not one but two lovely ladies: the buxom blonde ex-slave Helena (Debra Paget), whom he knew as a child, and who is now concubine to the evil magician Simon; and Joseph’s petite brunette granddaughter Deborah (Natalie Wood with an outrageously fake accent).
Meanwhile Simon, an alcoholic with delusions of grandeur, conceives a scheme to discredit Christianity by turning himself into a messiah figure who performs miracles (re: magic tricks) in public. Chief among these are to be stealing the Holy Grail and crushing it in his hands (because: evil!) and pretending to fly around a tall tower using cleverly hidden wires and a palette-swapped Superman costume.
However, just before a scheduled demonstration of his “flying” for Roman emperor Nero, Simon gets so drunk that he decides not to use the harness and fly via his own magic. Pavement gets splattered. Nero, ever villanious, has Helena pushed from the tower as well to see if she can do what Simon could not.
The film is notable in a couple of respects: one, when Basil travels to Rome to meet St. Peter and model his likeness for the Grail, he stays at a hostel maintained by Cephus the innkeper. Cephus evidently knows Peter, and promises repeatedly to introduce him to Basil.
However, delays keep piling up, and finally Basil asks why Peter won’t meet him. Cephus replies that Peter will see Basil when he’s ready. You’ve probably guessed by now that Cephus is actually Peter himself. (“Yoda. You seek Yoda.”)
The other notable thing is that, after Simon’s death at the tower, the citizens of Rome start a riot and begin looting houses. During the melee, the Holy Grail is stolen from Peter’s inn, and Basil is left with only the carving of Jesus’ face which he had been ready to attach to the silver chalice. Very Last Crusade.
Also, according to The Complete Making of Indiana Jones, an early draft of LC had the Grail Knight knock off one edge of the wooden chalice found by Indy to reveal a golden inner core. This was probably inspired by the Paul Newman film, though it kind of spoils the moral.
Rating: 6.75/10 wax apostle heads.
EDIT: I forgot to mention that early in the movie, young Basil carves a wooden ring with a lion-head crest for young Helena, and that’s how he recognizes her years later. I guess GL was still cribbing from this movie come the prequels.