The Slave (1962)

The Slave is a 1962 Italian peplum directed by Sergio Corbucci. The fact that the original title was Il figlio di Spartacus (The Son of Spartacus) will give you some hints of what you can expect from this movie.

Randus (Steve Reeves) is a Roman centurion and Julius Caesar thinks very highly of him. Randus is a fine soldier and a decent man. Caesar sends him off to Asia Minor to keep an eye on Crassus (Caesar, Pompey and Crassus between them controlled the whole of Rome’s empire). Randus suffers shipwreck and is then enslaved but he escapes with some help from another slave (who will play an important part in the story). During this episode he makes a terrifying discovery - he is actually the son of Spartacus! Spartacus of course led a major slave revolt about a quarter-century earlier. The fact that it was Crassus who put down the slave revolt and that Spartacus died in battle against him (or was crucified afterwards depending on whose account you believe) is obviously going to colour Randus’s feelings about Crassus.

Already very early in the picture Randus rescues a slave girl named Said who is being beaten, so we’re set up for the idea that sympathy for slaves seems is ingrained in the young centurion. The slave girl ends up being bought by Crassus’s wife Claudia.

Randus is now torn between loyalty to Rome and his destiny as the son of Spartacus. We know of course that he’s going to choose the latter - otherwise there would be no movie. But he doesn’t want to reveal himself openly yet.

The Romans are portrayed as being little more than barbarians except that they’re more imaginative in their cruelty. They are definitely the bad guys here. Or at least Crassus’s Romans are the bad guys although many of them are not Romans. And Caesar is played as the good Roman.

The violence of course is not graphic but the sadism and cruelty of the Romans is made pretty explicit. Crassus was very fond of crucifixion as a punishment (he crucified 6,000 slaves after Spartacus’s revolt) and in the movie at least he has come up with a number of twisted variations on the theme plus some other entirely original barbarities. Crassus is not a very nice man.

Needless to say strict historical accuracy was not a priority for the makers of this movie.

Like most Italian movies of its era it has a political slant, in this case the struggles of the downtrodden masses and various conquered peoples against their cruel oppressors. Mind you when you’re dealing with the Romans it’s not hard to feel sympathy for those conquered peoples.

Sergio Corbucci certainly had no problem with action scenes and there are a lot them - enough to satisfy anyone. The sets are impressive. There’s some location shooting in Egypt. On the whole this film succeeds in looking lavish and expensive even though the budget was probably very tight. Italian directors like Corbucci were used to having to get good results without spending a fortune.

Steve Reeves makes a fine action hero, as he did in all his movies in this genre. Claudio Gora makes a delightfully villainous Crassus. Any self-respecting peplum would have a beautiful but dangerous princess (or something similar) and that’s the function that Gianna Maria Canale fulfils as Crassus’s wife Claudia, and she does so with considerable style. She made many peplums and she is always a highlight. Ombretto Colli is also very good as the Egyptian slave girl Saide.

The ending was always going to be tricky. After all if the slaves win and the Romans are defeated that would be a bit too historically implausible, but if the slaves lose that means the son of Spartacus is going to come to a sticky end and that would be a very downbeat ending. So the writers have tried to find a vaguely believable way out of the dilemma and not surprisingly what they’ve come up with is a bit problematic.

The made-on-demand DVD from the Warner Archive series offers a very fine anamorphic transfer without any extras.

The Slave is a better-than-average peplum despite the flawed ending. It's definitely visually impressive and very entertaining. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed some of the other Steve Reeves peplums including Hercules, the rather so-so Goliath and the Barbarians and the slightly odd War of the Trojans.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen (1960)

I’m rather fond of the peplum genre but it has to be said that on the whole these are movies that you don’t want to try to take too seriously. Mostly they’re enjoyable as silly fun. Colossus and the Amazon Queen (the original title is La regina delle Amazzoni) dates from 1960 and is slightly unusual in that it was intended from the word go as a comedic take on the genre.

The dubbed version which hit the U.S. in 1964 pushes the comic elements even further, in fact it arguably pushes them a little too far.

This movie is also a bit unusual in that its star (or at least one of its two stars) went on to have a real career. That star was Australian Rod Taylor and in the same year that he made Colossus and the Amazon Queen he also made the movie that made him a legitimate movie star, that movie being The Time Machine.

Pirro (Rod Taylor) and Glauco (Ed Fury) are the two heroes. Pirro has the brains while Glauco has the muscles. At least Pirro thinks he’s the one with the brains. They’re broke and Pirro grabs what seems to him to be a great opportunity to earn some easy money. All they have to do is undertake a sea voyage and act as watchmen. The difficult part is tricking Glauco into going along with the idea but Pirro has plenty of experience in such matters.

Everything seems to be going well. They land on a remote island where lots of gold is waiting for them and the rest of the crew. There’s also a feast laid out with plenty of fine wine. Unfortunately the wine is drugged. They’ve been tricked but it’s worse than that - they have been sold to the Amazons. And the Amazons have only one use for men.

This is a Battle of the Sexes movie but with the roles reversed. The women are the warriors and are in control. The men are effeminate slaves who spend their time gossiping and are treated like pets. That is the fate awaiting Pirro, Glauco and their pals.

A worse fate may be in store for Glauco. He has offended the captain of the guard and she wants him put to death.

The Queen of the Amazons is anxious to give up her throne. All the other amazons are allowed to have men but the queen must remain chaste and she’s getting rather tired of chastity. There are two deadly rivals competing for the succession.

And of course there are plenty of romantic complications in store as well. The amazon women are all somewhat man-crazy. There are also some pirates who are mostly there so as to provide the obligatory climactic battle scene.

It’s very hard to judge comedy when it’s been dubbed. The original script might well have been quite witty. The dubbed version goes for broad comedy. Mostly it doesn’t succeed in being especially funny but it does manage to be seriously weird. This movie takes high camp as far as it can be taken and then some. There are some awesomely camp dance sequences. There’s also a cheerful disregard for period. The story is supposed to take place not long after the Trojan War but then we get some medieval jousting, not to mention the jazz-inspired dancing (and even without the jazzy score added for the dubbed version the dance routines are clearly jazz-inspired).

The costumes are absurd but they are amusingly bizarre.

The cast clearly understood that subtlety was not required in their performances.

One of the great things about movies of the past is that the film-makers did not agonise over whether their films might offend somebody. This is a rather good-natured movie on the whole but it sure isn’t politically correct.

Colossus and the Amazon Queen is available on DVD from Retromedia in a two-movie pack paired with Goliath and the Sins of Babylon. Goliath and the Sins of Babylon is an excellent film and it gets a pretty decent anamorphic transfer. Sadly the transfer for Colossus and the Amazon Queen is pan-and-scanned and definitely not so good.

It’s generally rather unfair to deliver a harsh judgment on a movie when you’re seeing it in a poorly dubbed version plus the print is not in great condition and to top it all off it’s pan-and-scanned but I think it’s still reasonable to say that this is a pretty bad movie. Despite this it has a certain goofy charm. It’s a bit like a beach party movie in that you have to be in the right mood but I found it to be oddly enjoyable. Recommended, if you have a high tolerance for camp.

Hercules, Samson & Ulysses (1963)

1958 saw the beginning of the short-lived but spectacular Italian peplum boom. Scores of imitators followed, and then after five or six years it was all over. The Italian film industry abandoned the peplum and embraced the spaghetti western. Which is a pity since on the whole the peplums were a lot more fun. Pietro Francisci directed the movie that started the craze, Hercules. And In 1963 he directed one of the last notable entries in the cycle, Hercules, Samson & Ulysses.

Francisci had in fact been making historical epics since the beginning of the 1950s. And in 1973, long after the peplum craze had run its course, he made yet another movie of this type, Sinbad and the Caliph of Baghdad. Clearly Francisci had a taste for this sort of thing.

Hercules, Samson & Ulysses opens with Hercules and his young friend Ulysses battling a sea monster that has been menacing Greek fishermen. Before the monster can be dealt with a storm intervenes and the heroes are shipwrecked. Hercules and Ulysses and four companions survive but the storm has taken them a very long way - all the way to a Danite village in Judea.

The people of Judea don’t seem too pleased about the arrival of these shipwrecked Greeks. Actually they’re mostly worried that the Greeks might be in league with the hated Philistines. The villagers are also worried that these visitors might betray their hero Samson who is hiding out amongst them.

Hercules and his friends set off for Gaza (where they hope to find a ship to take them home to Greece) accompanied by a Philistine merchant. When Hercules kills a lion with his bare hands the merchant is convinced that he must really be the famous Danite hero Samson. And there’s a very large reward for anyone who helps the Philistine king to capture Samson.

Hercules will meet the real Samson and in order to save his friends he will have to betray Samson to the Philistines. Unless of course he can find some honourable alternative - and Hercules can surely be relied upon to do the honourable thing?

Pietro Francisci knew his stuff when it came to directing this type of movie. The pacing is taut and there are some inspired moments. The action scenes (of which there’s no shortage) are well executed. The highlight is the epic fight between Hercules and Samson with the two heroes hurling gigantic stone blocks at each other, knocking over stone walls and generally demolishing every structure in sight. It’s truly one of the best peplum fight scenes ever. There are more superb and inventive action sequences in the latter part of the film.

The sets are very impressive. For a low budget movie this production manages to look very expensive.

Francisci wrote the screenplay as well as directing and he came up with a fairly decent story. It takes some of its inspiration from the Biblical story of Samson but brings Hercules into the story in at least a vaguely plausible way.

The acting reaches no great heights but it’s fine for this style of movie. Kirk Morris (who despite his screen name was an Italian actor and bodybuilder) is a convincing and quite acceptable hero and his performance is actually quite lively. Samson is played, and played pretty well, by Iranian actor Iloosh Khoshabe (under the suitable American-sounding name Richard Lloyd) while Ulysses is played in rather amiable and not overly heroic style by Enzo Cerusico. To be honest Ulysses is a minor character in this story. The original Italian title Ercole sfida Sansone would have been more accurately and more appropriately translated as Hercules Challenges Samson.

Diletta D'Andrea provides some amusement as Leria, the wife of Hercules. She’s a devoted wife but she’s getting a bit fed up with having her husband constantly away from home doing hero stuff.

Aldo Giuffrè is suitably cruel and villainous as the Philistine King. A really classic peplum should have a beautiful but evil queen and in this film it’s the notorious Philistine queen Delilah, played with considerable panache by Liana Orfei. Hers is the standout performance in the movie. I especially love her costume in the climactic battle scene - she looks like a sexy comic-book super-villainess.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD provides a pretty good anamorphic transfer. There is some very minor print damage but not enough to worry about and the colours are pleasingly vivid. If you’re a hardcore peplum fan you’ll know how hard it is to find these movies on DVD in an acceptable condition and in the correct aspect ratios - and peplums were always made in a widescreen format and even more than most movies they absolutely have to be seen in the proper aspect ratio. This release is most definitely a welcome one. One word of warning - don’t watch the trailer before watching the movie. It gives away far too much!

All peplums have a certain amount of camp appeal but Hercules, Samson & Ulysses stands up as a very decent action adventure movie indeed. This is definitely not to be dismissed as a so-bad-it’s-good movie. It’s superbly made, fairly well acted, it looks terrific and it’s packed with genuine spectacle and imaginative action scenes. It may have come along towards the tail end of the peplum boom but it’s one of the best movies of the genre. Very highly recommended.

Hannibal (1959)

Hannibal was one of the last movies in the strange but fascinating career of Edgar G. Ulmer, a director who achieved very little success during his lifetime but who since his death has accumulated a considerable and very loyal cult following.

By the late 50s it seemed that Ulmer was permanently trapped in ultra-cheap B-movie territory so Hannibal comes as something of a surprise - it’s a fairly lavish costume epic with no less than 12,000 extras in the battle scenes! It’s an Italian production shot in Italy and Yugoslavia but part-financed and released by Warner Brothers. It’s by far the most large-scale movie Ulmer ever made. It must have been quite an experience for Ulmer having a budget of around $5 million to play with! That’s possibly more than all his other films put together.

The movie opens with the great Carthaginian general Hannibal’s epic crossing of the Alps in 218 BC with his army, complete with the  famous elephants. It also establishes the idea of Hannibal being a rather complex character - he doesn’t hate Rome but he is determined, in his own words, never to bend the knee to the Romans. It also establishes the idea that Hannibal’s invasion is to some extent a defensive response to Roman aggression. Hannibal is to be the hero so obviously he has to be made fairly sympathetic.

The Alps having been successfully crossed the movie then veers in two separate directions, focusing on Hannibal’s extraordinary victories over the Romans at Trebia, Lake Trasimene and Cannae but also focusing on a rather melodramatic romantic sub-plot involving Hannibal’s love for the niece of the Roman senator Fabius Maximus. This sub-plot does serve some purpose, reinforcing the notion of Hannibal as a sometimes quixotic romantic hero, although it drags a little. The crossing of the Alps is the highlight of the picture, with Ulmer managing (with a mix of location and sound stage shooting) to convey the extraordinary difficulties and dangers involved. 

The battle scenes may infuriate history buffs - the Roman and Carthaginian armies were in reality disciplined armies that fought in regular formations rather than straggling mobs of barbarians involved in a massive pub brawl. On the other hand these battle scenes do have a certain vitality and Ulmer does make an effort to show us that Cannae was a battle won by superior generalship and tactics rather than mere courage. Ulmer apparently used no less than six cameras to shot these scenes, with the Cannae sequences being shot on the Yugoslav Army’s artillery proving range.

The human elements introduced into the story are hampered by some rather poor acting from most of the supporting cast. Gabriele Ferzetti isn’t too bad as Fabius, making a real effort to portray him as a man of iron determination, cool judgment and remorseless will. Rita Gam as Hannibal’s Roman love interest Sylvia seems rather unsure of herself.

There’s no problem however with Victor Mature as Hannibal. He’s obviously having a wonderful time. He plays the part with a twinkle in his eye (I say eye rather than eyes because for most of the movie he sports a rather piratical eye-patch on one eye). Mature’s approach actually works very well, helping to humanise the character. Mature was a very underrated actor and even when overacting he is able to convey the impression that Hannibal is man of unexpected depths, capable of unpredictable moments of generosity and compassion.

In accordance with standard Italian practice the dialogue was undoubtedly dubbed in during post-production. Fortunately we get to hear Mature’s real voice, a major bonus since he delivers even potentially embarrassing lines with zest and panache.

More interesting than the film itself is one of the extras - an audio interview with Ulmer conducted by Peter Bogdanovich. Ulmer’s stories of his early career are fascinating but he also talks about making Hannibal. Ulmer wanted to make the movie a human drama rather than a mere spectacle and eventually came up with an idea of how to do this. His idea would also explain the mystery that has puzzled historians for two thousand years - when Hannibal had Rome at his mercy after the Battle of Cannae why didn’t he complete his victory by marching on the virtually undefended city and conquer it? Ulmer’s imaginative solution was to portray Hannibal as a man who knows that he represents a dying civilisation while Rome represents the future. When he finds himself in a position to destroy Rome he can’t bring himself to do it because it would mean destroying the future. Whether this idea had any basis in historical fact is more than dubious but in filmic terms it was a great idea and would have given the picture a tragic dimension as well as giving Hannibal real psychological complexity. Tragically the studio vetoed the whole idea, much to Ulmer’s disgust, and those scenes were never shot.

VIC have done a very decent job with their DVD release. The movie was shot in Cinemascope and colour and the transfer is anamorphic. The print used is in fairly good condition. It’s just a little dark in places but on the whole it’s quite vibrant and there’s no noticeable print damage.

Had Ulmer been allowed to make the picture his way Hannibal could have been one of the great epics. As it stands it’s still an interesting and slightly unusual costume film. Ulmer adds a few nice touches and Victor Mature’s performance is enough on its own to make this worth watching. Recommended. 

Magnificent Gladiator (1964)

Magnificent Gladiator was a late entry in the Italian peplum cycle. It’s not by any means a great example of the genre but it is a good deal of silly fun.

It was written and directed by Alfonso Brescia and if you’re familiar with Brescia’s work this may well cause you to gnash your teeth in despair. Brescia is one of the legendary bad film-makers but while he was certainly bad he was never boring. 

This film belongs to the non-fantasy historical peplum sub-genre - they are no monsters or supernatural events. However one should not jump to the conclusion that anything in this movie has much to do with actual history.

It starts with the Romans fighting the Dacians. Attalus, the son of the Dacian king, surrenders in order to save his people. In the English dubbed version Attalus becomes Hercules because in English-dubbed peplums the hero is always called Hercules. 

Attalus/Hercules (Mark Forest) soon wins the favour of the Roman Emperor Gallienus (Franco Cobianchi) by demonstrating his prowess in the arena. Gallienus is a rather jovial sort of emperor but he is by no means a fool. He takes a genuine liking to Hercules and the feeling is reciprocated. Hercules’ people have been enslaved but that is no great problem. Gallienus assures our hero that they will soon be granted Roman citizenship and in fact he has every intention of honouring his promise. So everything seems pretty hunky dory - the Dacians can look forward to a future of security and prosperity as part of the Roman Empire, and Hercules has every prospect of marrying the emperor’s daughter Velida (Marilù Tolo).

There is however one major problem. That problem is Zullo (Paolo Gozlino). Zullo is wealthy, powerful, treacherous and ambitious. He intends to marry Velida himself and to seize the imperial throne. A good peplum has to have a beautiful evil princess and in this movie that function is performed by Clea (Jolanda Modio). She’s not actually a princess but she is a noblewoman highly placed at the imperial court and she is evil and she is beautiful. She’s also Zullo’s girlfriend but she’s happy to go along with his plans to marry Velida, confident that her rival can be disposed of later.

Zullo has a lucky break when he finds an out-of-work actor convicted of thieving, an actor who just happens to be the spitting image of the emperor. By substituting the actor for the emperor he can ensure the succession for himself after which he can get rid of both the emperor and the actor.

It goes without saying that Hercules gets wind of this nefarious plot and sets out to save Velida, and the emperor, and the Roman Empire, and his Dacians.

This movie is a bit unusual in that neither the Romans nor the Dacians are the bad guys. The trouble is caused entirely by the evil machinations of Zullo and Clea. 

In an Alfonso Brescia movie you expect some serious weirdness. In this case the weirdness is provided by the crazy hyperactive shepherd Drusius (Oreste Lionello). Drusius also provides the obligatory comic relief. He is loyal to Hercules but most of all he is loyal to his sheep, especially his favourite sheep Messalina.

Unusually for a Brescia movie (generally synonymous with extreme cheapness) Magnificent Gladiator does have a certain amount of at least moderately impressive spectacle including a reasonably large-scale battle scene early on. The sets also are not too bad - possibly they may have been left over from a more expensive production? This is still clearly a very low-budget movie but for a Brescia movie it doesn’t look as shoddy as usual.

Mark Forest is obviously not taking the proceedings too seriously. This is a silly fun movie and his performance reflects this. At least he isn’t embarrassingly wooden. Franco Cobianchi is rather good playing the dual roles of the surprisingly sympathetic Roman emperor and the second-rate actor who is not quite as malleable a dupe as Zullo had hoped for. Jolanda Modio does just fine in the femme fatale role as Clea. Nazzareno Zamperla is fine as Herc’s faithful sidekick Horatius. The problem is Oreste Lionello as Drusius - he’s insanely over-the-top but not particularly funny and soon becomes irritating. This may have been exacerbated by the dubbing so perhaps I’m being unfair to Lionello - maybe he was genuinely funny in Italian. His devotion to his beloved sheep does however provide the off-the-wall quality so essential in an Alfonso Brescia opus.

Retromedia have done a reasonable job with their DVD release. There’s some print damage and on occasions the colour fluctuates just a little but on the whole it’s an OK print and it is in the correct aspect ratio and the transfer is anamorphic - both major pluses for fans of the peplum genre accustomed to seeing horrible butchered pan-and-scanned prints of these types of movies.

If you’re looking for much more extreme examples of Brescia’s enjoyable cinematic  looniness check out Cosmos: War of the Planets (1977) and Amazons vs Supermen (1975).

Magnificent Gladiator is consistently silly but it’s still hugely entertaining fun. Recommended.

Son of Samson (1960)

Son of Samson (Maciste nella valle dei re) dates from 1960 and is a fairly stock-standard peplum made slightly more interesting by a non-standard setting in ancient Egypt.

The Egyptians are being oppressed by their Persian conquerors and the Pharaoh is little more than a puppet. When he shows signs of independence he is murdered. Meanwhile the heir to the throne, Kenamun, has had a chance meeting in the desert with a muscle-bound strongman. Kenamun saves the strongman’s life when he is attacked by a lion, and when another lion appears the strongman returns the favour. In the English dub we are told that this muscle-bound hero’s name is Maciste and that he is the son of Samson. One assumes that the son of Samson bit has been added for the English dub and that in the original Italian version he is simply Maciste. Maciste had been a popular hero in Italian movies as far back as 1914 when he featured in the brilliant epic Cabiria and would have needed no further introduction to Italian audiences.

The heir to the throne has some big problems, caused by the machinations of the obligatory beautiful-but-evil Queen Smedes. She is determined to cement her power by marrying Kenamun. Kenamun has rather inconveniently fallen in love with a humble girl named Nofret, one of a party of women who had been rescued from marauding bad guys by Maciste. Smedes makes Kenamun a gift of a necklace, a necklace with magical powers that causes Kenamun to forget his love for Nofret and his friendship for Maciste.

Maciste arrives in the Egyptian city of Tanis and starts causing mayhem by beating up the palace guards and freeing slaves and others oppressed by the wicked regime. Maciste knows that Kenamun is a good man and that he is not responsible for the evil deeds done in his name but he has to find a way to reach Kenamun. Naturally Maciste is given various opportunities to demonstrate his superhuman strength, single-handedly lifting obelisks and performing other similar feats of strength.

The plot is standard for the genre and features two-dimensional villains and two-dimensional heroes. There’s just enough action to keep things interesting.

One thing that is unusual is the level of graphic violence and gore. It seems quite likely that cuts would have been required at the time and it’s rather fortunate that Retromedia have been able to source their DVD from what we can assume to be an uncut print. 

Mark Forest was an American body-builder from Brooklyn who enjoyed a brief period of stardom in Italy during the peplum boom. He was never likely to win any acting awards but he certainly looks the part. The evil queen is played by Chelo Alonso, a striking Cuban actress popularly known as the Cuban H-bomb. She’s also no great shakes in the acting department but like Forest she has the right look for this type of movie. 

The Egyptian settings provide some surprisingly impressive spectacle, the costumes are handsome and the battle scenes are done quite well considering the limited numbers of extras that the budget was able to furnish.

Director Carlo Campogalliani had made his first Maciste movie more than forty years earlier so as you’d expect he handles the job quite competently.

There are no monsters and the only supernatural elements are the magic necklace plus an old guy who seems to have some limited psychic powers that play no part at all in the plot.

Retromedia have released this movie as part of a double-feature DVD, paired with Son of Cleopatra. Son of Samson gets a 16x9 enhanced transfer. Image quality is adequate with very little print damage. Colours are not quite as bright as one could wish for. Sound quality is fine.

If you’re not a peplum fan then Son of Samson is not the movie that is going to change your mind about the genre. If you are a fan you’ll be reasonably satisfied. This is not in the first rank of such movies but it’s enjoyable enough. Recommended.

Gold for the Caesars (1963)

Gold for the Caesars (Oro per i Cesari) is a fairly late and slightly unusual entry in the Italian peplum cycle of the late 50s and early 60s. It was directed by Andre de Toth whose movies are always worth a look.

This is a historical peplum rather than a fantasy peplum so there are no monsters. There’s also not a great deal of action until very late in the film but it holds the viewer’s interest by offering characters with a little more depth than was customary in the genre and with some fairly complex relationships between those characters. If there’s such a thing as a character-driven peplum then this is it.

Lacer (Jeffrey Hunter) is a slave who is building a bridge in Spain in 96 AD. He might be a slave but he’s a very favoured slave who happens to be the principal engineer on the project. He is owned by Maximus (Massimo Girotti), the Roman governor of the province.

Maximus is an ambitious man and those ambitions have been fired by soothsayers’ predictions that by the Ides of January Rome will have a new emperor. Maximus intends to be that new emperor but he has a serious rival in the person of Trajan. If Maximus is to win the purple he will need gold, and in large quantities. Gold is supposedly to be found in a valley in Spain but the valley is located in a part of the province over which Rome has no effective control. The valley is firmly in the hands of the Celtic chieftain Malendi (Georges Lycan). 

Maximus has only two legions under his command and any attempt to wrest command of the valley by force would be likely to result in heavy losses. Maximus has a plan to deal with this. He will make peace with Malendi. No-one seriously expects this to work but Maximus succeeds in persuading Malendi of his good intentions. An expedition is despatched to bring back the gold. The gold is to be found in old mines once worked by the Carthaginians. Getting the gold out will require a skilled engineer and Lacer is the obvious choice. Lacer is put in charge, with Rufus (Ron Randell) in command of the Roman troops. Since Lacer and Rufus hate each other this is always going to lead to problems.

There is of course a romantic sub-plot and on this occasion it’s quite well integrated into the main plot. Lacer and Penelope (Mylène Demongeot) have fallen in love. Penelope is Maximus’s mistress and she is torn between love and ambition. She loves Lacer but Maximus may well be emperor soon and she sees herself as having a pretty good chance of becoming empress. Maximus knows about Lacer and Penelope but he tolerates the situation because he needs Lacer.

The gold-finding expedition proves to be more difficult than expected. The mines are behind a waterfall and getting access to them makes it necessary to build a dam. Lacer is a skilled engineer and is well able to cope with these difficulties but Maximus is aware that time is against him. He has to have that gold if he is to head off the challenge from the increasingly popular Trajan. Maximus’s anxiety for fast results will lead him to interfere with Lacer’s patient efforts and this will prove to be potentially a very serious mistake, provoking the very problems with the Celts that his earlier diplomacy was intended to avoid.

Maximus is an interesting character. He is a ruthless and calculating man but he’s also intelligent and subtle. As time starts to run out for his bid for empire the flaws in his character start to appear and his previous sound judgment starts to go astray. Massimo Girotti was a very fine actor and his performance is well-judged.

Jeffrey Hunter is an adequate hero and manages to bring some subtlety to his performance. Lacer is by nature a careful and patient man but love tends to make a man forget being careful and patient. 

Mylène Demongeot is impressive as Penelope. Penelope is genuinely in love with Lacer but any woman would be a fool to give up the chance to be empress. She really doesn’t know which way to jump.

Ron Randell does his best but Rufus is the least interesting of the major characters. He is vicious and unintelligent and it’s difficult to make him much more than a mere stock villain. 

There’s some good location photography and the engineering scenes involving bridges, dams and mines are impressively mounted. We have to wait quite a while for the action scenes but they’re well-executed. 

The Warner Archive MOD DVD offers no extras and only the English dubbed version but the print is quite good and (a major bonus for peplum fans) the transfer is in the correct aspect ratio and it’s 16x9 enhanced.

Gold for the Caesars is in some ways too psychologically ambitious for its own good. Fans of this genre probably hoped for a bit more action but there’s some effective dramatic tension and those prepared to give this movie a chance will find it a surprisingly effective if unusual representative of its genre. Recommended.

War of the Trojans (1962)

War of the Trojans (AKA La leggenda di Enea, AKA The Avenger) is a 1962 peplum starring Steve Reeves, most famous for playing Hercules in the movie that triggered the peplum craze. But War of the Trojans is anything but a typical peplum. It’s an attempt at a serious historical epic. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of taste but to have any chance of appreciating this movie you have to be prepared to accept it serious intentions.

This movie’s other problem is that it assumes you know a certain amount about Greco-Roman mythology. It was actually a sequel to an earlier Steve Reeves movie, The Trojan Horse, so if you haven’t seen that movie and you don’t know your mythology you’re likely to be quite perplexed by War of the Trojans.

The hero of the movie (played by Reeves naturally) is Aeneas. Aeneas was a Trojan hero, a distant cousin of King Priam and a faithful lieutenant to the great Trojan hero Hector. Aeneas survived the fall of Troy and led a group of other Trojan survivors on a series of adventures in various lands before they finally settled in Italy, on the banks of a river called the Tiber. Their descendants would become much better known as the Romans. Aeneas is the hero of Virgil’s great epic poem the Aeneid. The movie pretty much assumes that you know all this.

The movie follows Virgil reasonably closely. The movie opens with the arrival of Aeneas and his followers, the remnants of the Trojans, in Latium. The king of Latium, Latinus (called Latino in the movie) welcomes Aeneas and grants him lands on the Tiber and the title of a Latin prince. This enrages Turnus (called Turno in the movie and played by Gianni Garko), the king of the Rutili. The enmity between Aeneas and Turno slowly builds, fueled by romantic complications involving King Latino’s daughter Lavinia (Carla Marlier). The machinations of Latino’s queen Amata, who happens to be Turno’s aunt, adds even more fuel to the fire.

Eventually war erupts. Aeneas needs allies and turns to the Etruscans for help, while Turno is supported by Camilla (Liana Orfei), the queen of the Volsci.

The build-up to the war is rather slow, mostly because the script is determined to establish the complex reasons for the war and for the various alliances that will decide it. When the action does arrive there is plenty of it.

The most impressive thing about this movie is that it doesn’t just put the Trojans, Rutilians, Latins and Volsci in cast-off Greek or Roman armour and costumes left over from other historical epics. Considerable pain have been taken to make the costumes distinctive and most importantly to give them a genuinely archaic look. They really do look like they come from a much earlier historical period compared to the armour and costumes you see in most historical epics. The events depicted in the movie are supposed to have occurred around the 12th century BC and the movie does a fine job of convincing us that we really are in the very distant past. The sets also look convincingly archaic.

The battle scenes are fairly well done and again they have the right flavour. This was the heroic age and battles would certainly have been rather chaotic affairs compared to the disciplined scientific warfare evolved by the Greek many centuries later.

All of these attempts at historical realism, or at least at giving a mythological story a feeling of historical realism, are all very well but what you want to know is whether it’s an entertaining movie or not. The answer to that is a bit tricky. It’s definitely not the kind of high camp fun that one usually associates with the peplum genre. One of the great attractions of this genre is the cheesiness, and this movie’s cheesiness factor is very close to zero. If you’re looking for outrageous cheesy fun you’re likely to be disappointed. If you’re prepared to accept the movie as an attempt at a serious historical epic and if you have an enthusiasm for mythology and ancient history then you’re likely to enjoy it quite a bit.

Steve Reeves plays it very straight. His Aeneas is a brave and skillful warrior and a wise leader but he’s no superman. It’s a restrained performance that suits the tone of the movie.   The acting in general is restrained, with Gianni Garko as Turno being the only one to indulge in anything resembling scenery-chewing. Queen Camilla of the Volsci looks like a prime candidate to be the kind of beautiful but evil queen that adds so much fun to so many movies of this type but the movie opts to stick to the mythology and resist the temptation to make her a femme fatale type, and Liana Orfei plays Camilla as a brave and honourable woman who happens to have picked the wrong ally.

Giorgio Venturini directed a mere handful of movies. He does a competent job but the movie really could have used a bit more dash.

Retromedia paired this movie with Giant of Marathon as their Steve Reeves Collection. There’s good news and bad news as far as the transfer for War of the Trojans is concerned. The good news is that it’s in the correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and the transfer is 16x9 enhanced, and the movie seems to be relatively complete. The bad news is that it’s a fairly poor print. The colours are unstable and there’s a lot of print damage. But after years of having to make do with horrible pan-and-scan versions of most peplums it’s a luxury to at least have the correct aspect ratio.

War of the Trojans is a bit of an oddity and it’s not going to satisfy most peplum fans. It is slow-moving, but if you’re in the mood for something a bit different it’s worth giving it a chance.

The Tartars (1961)

The Tartars (I tartari) is a 1961 sword and sandal epic which was an Italian-Yugoslavian co-production distributed by MGM. It belongs to the historical rather than mythological peplum genre. There are no monsters but there are some pretty fair battle scenes and it does star Orson Welles and Victor Mature, which is more than sufficient reason to make it worth seeing.

The setting is the Russian steppe about a thousand years ago. The Vikings have settled here and are doing quite well but they are under pressure from their powerful neighbours the Tartars who have reached the same destination coming from the east. The local Tartar khan is trying to persuade the peace-loving (!) Vikings to join the Tartars in beating up on the local Slav tribes but the Vikings just want to be left alone to work their farms in peace. When the Viking Prince Oleg (Victor Mature) is presented with the khan’s proposal he stubbornly refuses. An altercation ensures, during which Oleg demonstrates his commitment to the peace process by putting his battle-axe through the khan’s head. Sometimes you have to put the case for peace rather forcefully. The Vikings make off with a Tartar princess, Samia (Bella Cortez) as a hostage.

The khan’s brother Burundai (Orson Welles) is not entirely displeased by these events. He is now the chief khan of the neighbourhood, answerable only to the Great Khan himself. And the Great Khan is a long way away. Burundai is intensely ambitious and he regards the opposition of the Vikings as a small matter. He soon has a hostage of his own, Helga (Liana Orfei), the wife of Oleg.

The natural expectation at this point would be an exchange of hostages but things have become complicated. Samia and Oleg’s brother Eric (Luciano Marin) have fallen in love and Samia has no wish to return to her people. Burundai meanwhile has raped Helga and in any case he had no intention of exchanging hostages. The life of a Tartar princess is of no concern to him if it stands in the way of his ambitions.

When the Vikings discover what has happened to Helga they start to get seriously annoyed. Even the most peace-loving (!) peoples can only be pushed so far. War is clearly going to ensue. The odds seem to be stacked against the Vikings but Oleg is now out for revenge.

There’s pretty much all there is to the plot. It’s a bit thin, but at 83 minutes this is fairly short for a peplum and the plot is enough to set up the climactic battle scene. The ending is rather unexpected but I won’t give anything away by saying any more about it.

The battle scenes are on a fairly lavish scale. There are either a lot of extras or some pretty clever camera tricks have been used to make it look that way. The action scenes are handled well and there are enough of them to compensate for the slightly threadbare plot.

These Vikings are strictly plains-dwellers but being Vikings they haven’t ventured too far from water. Their fort is on the river Volga and we do get to see an actual Viking longboat even if it plays a minor role in the action.

The palace of the Khan is impressive and looks suitably exotic and eastern. Orson Welles gets to wear some very cool eastern potentate costumes, and also sports reasonably effective makeup to give the impression of being an Asiatic warlord.

Orson Welles is in fact the chief reason for watching this movie. He’s delightfully debauched and evil (and lecherous) with a rather nice line in simmering malevolence. American actors didn’t always get to dub their own voices in Italian movies but there’s no mistaking that the voice you hear in this movie most certainly belongs to Welles. Welles even gets to do some action scenes, wielding a sword with some enthusiasm. Burundai mostly gets his henchmen to do his dirty work but you don’t get to be a khan unless you’re prepared to lead your troops in battle.

Victor Mature gets overshadowed a little by Welles, but then that happened to just about everybody who played opposite Welles. It’s not easy getting noticed when Welles is in full flight but Mature is a solid enough hero. Luciano Marin is adequate as Oleg’s basically loyal but trouble-prone brother. The two main female stars really don’t get much to do. Arnoldo Foà stands out in the supporting cast as Burundai’s chief henchman Ciu Lang. Looking oddly like a Buddhist monk Ciu Lang is an interesting character, a man who has too many moral scruples to be entirely comfortable serving a master like Burundai.

The Warner Archive made-on-demand DVD has no extras apart from the movie’s trailer but the anamorphic transfer is quite splendid, presenting the movie in its correct 2.35:1 aspect ratio and in all its Technicolor glory. Picture quality is sharp and the colours are vivid and there is no noticeable print damage. It’s very rare to see a movie of this genre looking this good.

The Tartars is worth a look just for Orson Welles’ magnificently evil performance. Apart from that it looks great and it’s perfectly decent entertainment and even if it doesn’t reach any great heights fans of the genre should be reasonably well satisfied. Recommended.

Cabiria (1914)

Whether Cabiria was actually the first ever feature film may be debatable, but it was certainly the first cinematic epic. Originally released in mid-1914, before the First World  War, it can fairly claim to be one of the most influential motion pictures ever made. Its other claim to fame is that it introduced the character of Maciste. This strongman hero would go on to appear in countless Italian movies right up to the 1960s and would become the major hero of the peplum (Italian sword-and-sandal) genre. Cabiria is in fact the ancestor of that entire genre.

Director Giovanni Pastrone had been making movies as far back as 1908 but Cabiria was something new entirely. Even by the standards of movie epics Cabiria is astonishingly ambitious, both in terms of visual grandeur and in the complexity of the story it tells. Pastrone was also an important technical innovator, being the first film-maker to attempt tracking shots. Many of the innovations usually credited to D. W. Griffith were actually pioneered by Pastrone. Griffith would use them more boldly but Pastrone in many cases got there first.

Gabriele d’Annunzio, one of the key figures in late 19th an early 20th century Italian literature, wrote the title cards and much of the story (in collaboration with Pastrone). The influence of Gustave Flaubert’s brilliant 1862 novel Salammbô is obvious although the story also draws on a novel by Emilio Salgari. The primary source though was Livy’s history of Rome.

The movie was made by Pastrone’s own production company, Itala Films, and when released was an international sensation.

The movie is set against the background of the Second Punic War in the early 2nd century BC, with Rome fighting for survival against the Carthaginian armies led by Hannibal.

The movie starts in a town on the slopes of Mt Etna. The volcano erupts and Cabiria, the eight-year-old daughter of a wealthy merchant, is believed to have perished in the disaster. Cabiria is not in fact dead but by a series of mischances in the confusion she ends up in the hands of pirates, and this is merely the beginning of her troubles. She is about to be sacrificed to the Carthaginian god Moloch when she is rescued, at least temporarily, by a brave and kindly Roman named Fulvius Axilla (Umberto Mozzato) and his faithful black slave Maciste (Bartolomeo Pagano). Fulvius, Maciste and Cabiria will all find themselves pawns in the complex machinations of the Carthaginian noblewoman Sophonisba (Italia Almirante-Mazzini).

If this movie has a major flaw it is that the plot is just too complex and tries to deal with too many major political and military events. It all becomes a little bewildering, and there is insufficient focus on Cabiria’s own story. What has to be borne in mind is that the feature film virtually didn’t exist before this movie was made. Pastrone had to make up the rules as he went along. That he made a few mistakes and occasional lost control of his material is hardly surprising; what is more surprising is that it works as well as it does.

Sophonisba is the character who more or less dominates the movie and this is no bad thing. She is by a long way the most interesting character and Italia Almirante-Mazzini is by far the strongest member of the cast. Sophonisba can almost be seen as the first screen femme fatale or at least as a kind of proto-vamp. Almost, but not quite, since she never entirely loses our sympathy. At times she is ruthless and she is always scheming but then it has to be said that she is struggling to survive in a very perilous world and she is caught between two mighty (and very dangerous) empires, Rome and Carthage. She is courageous and determined so she is both vamp and heroine.

Pastrone’s visual style is best described as painterly. While he does at times move the camera he mostly relies on his sense of composition, making each shot seem like an historical painting come to life. It works because his compositions are so brilliant. His cutting is also, for 1914, rather bold and this saves the movie from the static quality that afflicts other very early feature films. It’s true that Griffith would surpass him in the field of editing but again Pastrone was the pioneer.

The pacing is rather leisurely although the movie’s slowness is due mainly to its excessively complicated plot.

The visuals are unquestionably stunning, not just by the standards of 1914 but by any standards. The sets are immense and overwhelming. The temple of Moloch in this film has inspired countless set designers. There are some spectacular stunts and they are clearly dangerous and clearly done for real. Other highlights are a volcanic eruption, the destruction of a Roman fleet, Hannibal’s crossing of the Alps (complete with elephants) and various battles. This movie has enough spectacular visual set-pieces for half a dozen movies.

Kino’s DVD release is bitterly disappointing. The movie is heavily cut, although apparently a more or less uncut print survives. Picture quality ranges from good to awful. There are no extras.

Cabiria has immense historical importance, to both movie lovers in general and to cult movie fans. Despite some flaws it is more than just an historical curiosity. Its visual splendour carries it through some slow moments. Recommended.