Äneas, Held von Troja

THE LAST GLORY OF TROY - aka WAR OF THE Trojans, aka THE AVENGER - is the sequel to THE WOODEN HORSE OF TROY, a film that portrayed the Trojan War and also starred Steve Reeves as the eponymous hero Aeneas. This time around, the Trojans are a defeated people, having fled from their sacked city, but a mixture of courage and cunning sees them go on to found what is modern-day Rome.

Unfortunately THE LAST GLORY OF TROY is a somewhat lacklustre sequel that more often than not is a rather BORING peplum flick. It has relatively lengthy running time, and much of that running time is made up of small talk between dull characters. Even Steve Reeves doesn't have much of a part to play here, feeling like a supporting character in his own movie, although the cast is populated with familiar faces including Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Liana Orfei and Gianni Garko.

The film does pick up for its second half, offering a handful of battle sequences, although the choreography isn't particularly great in these. But it lacks the tight script and focus of the first film and with six different scriptwriters credited it feels like a bit of a confused mess, struggling to make sense of itself.

Did Steve Reeves make any decent movies outside of the first two Hercules films?

This is a sequel to the Trojan Horse.

Trojans, fleeing from the remains of Troy end up in Italy and get mixed up with the Etruscans. The Trojans want a place to stay, but... The king is cool with it,the prince is not. A princess loves Reeves, but ends up involved with the prince... The prince sets up the Trojans and after 40 to 45 minutes of court intrigue a war breaks out, but its dull. Ultimately it comes down to Reeves and the prince fighting in silly helmets, which isn't revealing anything since its supposedly history and its in the trailer.

I paid for this on video tape for what reason?

Don't make my mistake, avoid this film.

This is an unnecessary and very much inferior sequel to THE Trojan HORSE (1961), evidently made on a reduced budget (though the murky, pan-and-scan print I watched certainly did no favors to it or the scenes from the original which were interspersed into the narrative as flashbacks!); Steve Reeves reprises his role of Enea - whose lineage, we are told, eventually led to Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome (incidentally, the actor appeared in a peplum about that very event called DUEL OF THE TITANS [1961]!) - but his performance here is somewhat mechanical and less convincing...though that may be due to the English dubbing, whereas I had watched the earlier film in Italian!!

As a whole, THE AVENGER (the print I watched bore the title THE LAST GLORY OF TROY, given to it when sold to TV) is only marginally better than the ordinary peplum: the plot is rather dreary this time around, in comparison to the fascinating events depicted in the original; the cast - despite the presence of Euro-Cult regulars like Gianni Garko (essaying the role of the villain) and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (effectively dispatched by a hail of arrows in the style of Akira Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD [1957]!) - is less interesting; and the battle sequences are only memorable for the ridiculously-shaped helmets with which the warriors on both fronts are saddled!!

The Avenger covers the story of Aeneas and how he led some survivors of Troy into exile on the Italian peninsula. Steve Reeves repeats his role Aeneas from The Trojan War as the exiled Trojans look to make a new home.

Unfortunately in Etruscan Italy their addition complicates what looks like a delicately balanced situation among a lot of petty kings. One of them covets the land the Trojans have been granted on to settle.

In the tradition of the Trojan War the film is cut above a lot of the Peplum epics that the Italians were churning out in the early 60s, taking advantage of those sets left over from Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis. It's all based on Virgil's Aeneid.

And we get to see more of Steve Reeves physical development. That's what many were plunking their money down to see/

Yes Steve Reeves has done better movies. Maybe just his presence here will make you feel differently about this (and the rating I and many others have given). But if you try to be as objective as possible, this does not really stand out against most of the other Sword and Sandals movies .. it isn't the worst either of course, but there are so many ... it's exhausting.

So yes this is a Trojan story or some resemblance of that. It may even continue from another movie as another reviewer has suggested. Nothing of that seems to be needed to get the gist of it all. Fight scenes are ok, not anything to get too excited about either