This is a Sergio Leone film so watch it even
if it is a Sword and Sandal or Peplum film. Admittedly not anything close
to his Spaghetti Westerns that were not to come till some five years later
and actually before he got to those he was to make another film in the same
genre - The Colossus of Rhodes. He had been lined up to only be the Assistant
Director but the director had to bow out very early on with an illness and
Leone took over but did not get official credit. The film looks great shot
in CinemaScope with bright colors, some good models and sets and a few very
lovely women. It is also clumsy, corny, kind of low-brow but still fun in
a throwback popcorn kind of way.
It also stars body builder Steve Reeves, a young man from Montana, who had
just hit the sweepstakes with Hercules the year before. That film got the
whole Peplum genre rolling and made Reeves hugely popular. Yes, he acts like
a rock at rest but he really was a good looking guy. We get to watch him beat
off an army of bad guys, kill an alligator in the water, kill a lion in the
gladiator arena, swim under a ring of fire and save the girl. The best part
of the film is probably when at the end Vesuvius raises its wrath like a
woman scorned and rains down ash and fire upon the city. For 1959, they did
a pretty good job of filming a city aflame and panicked crowds fleeing for
their lives. Models come crumbling down upon the populace. Scientists think
that the explosive power of Vesuvius was enormous and released more thermal
energy than the bomb at Hiroshima. Only one survivor ever wrote about it
- Pliny the Younger who witnessed the event from a distance.
This is loosely based on the novel of the same name written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
in 1834. The gist of the plot is still here -an evil Priest of ISIS (no, not
today's terrorist group), a young hottie and the hero living in Pompeii in
79 A.D. - not a good time to be there. It was an interesting and chaotic period
in the Roman Empire. Nero had died only 10 years before, a civil war broke
out between four men for the title of Emperor and the man who won it Vespasian
had just died. Also, this period was the rise of Christianity and the empire's
attempts to destroy it, which is a large part of the story. There have been
a few film versions of the book and though not based on the book there was
a story of the end of Pompeii a few years ago in which John Snow, I mean
Kitt Harington, gets to play the lead.
Of little interest to anyone but me the film also has Fernando Rey as the
evil Priest who just had one of those incredible lengthy careers in international
films - to me best known for The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie. And totally
unknown to me in the role of the love of Reeves was Christine Kauffman, who
is quite stunning and still alive and appeared in over 100 films in her life
- among them Taras Bulba, Lola, Lili Marleen and Bagdad Café. Her last
listed role was in 2014.