Hélène, reine de Troie

In a beauty contest with contemporary Helen Diane Kruger in Petersen's extravaganza ,Yvonne Furneaux would certainly win hands down,weren't it only for her sublime eyes.

A "cultural" prologue tells us that the film was based on "documents" which would tend to substantiate a thesis that,for Helen,there was a life after Troy.And that she and Menelas were not exactly the best of friends when the war came to an end .I doubt,however,that a junior high school student would get an A plus if he wrote his essay about Helen's fate after watching this flick.

The star is actually Mark Forest a muscle man ,who left reportedly sword and sandals for the opera ,but his acting is so wooden that Yvonne Furneaux's beauty (a French Helen,why not?) is the main attraction.

The story? Helen and her attentive escort Arion arrive in Egypt where they are taken in by the pharaoh.Of course Helen's beauty is bound to cause more disasters but there are plenty of villains around including her hubby himself.Poor Helen is accused of pharaoh's murder and sentenced to a horrible death ( crushed between two stones).There are lots of treasons,murders,even a trial ,in a cheap Thebes.

Girogio Ferroni had directed another movie about Troy with Steve Reeves but he did not use the same actress for Helen:Yvonne Furneaux is an improvement on the former actress,this is the only nice thing I can say about "Leone di Tebe"

LION OF THEBES is the story of Aryan (Mark Forest), a bodyguard who has saved the life of Helen of Troy (a delicious portrayal by the ever-beautiful Yvonne Furneaux) as the Greeks sack the fabled city. Their flight leads them to the deserts of Egypt and finally to Thebes. There Pharoah Ramses goes mad for Helen and decides his intended bride (the wonderful Rosalba Neri) is no longer good enough for him. There is much court intrigue, an assassination, which naturally culminates in Helen being blamed for the whole mess. The true guilty parties attempt to put her to death but Aryan saves the day. This film could have used several hundred more extras but everything considered is not a bad peplum at all. Mark Forest considered this his best film and he certainly is good. The color is dazzling as are the lighting schemes and cinematography. These Italian sword and sandal epics are in serious need of re-evaluation because they certainly do not deserve the critical beatings they took in the Sixties. Worthy of a viewing by anyone who enjoys this genre.

From the first scenes, you discover the predictable story proposed by the long chain of movies of genre. Virtues - the body of Mark Forest and the special beauty of Yvonne Furneaux , the ingrate Menelaus and, sure, the machine of death.

The result is charming for reasonable mix of Iliad and Old Egypt, silly mix of names = Amenofis, Tutmes, Ramses - and the lovely - conventional love story, after fights dosis.

Short - just nice.

This is another above-average peplum and one that's actually a follow-up to Ferroni's own THE Trojan HORSE (1961), since it follows the exploits of Helen Of Troy after the fall of that city; the earlier film had already had a sequel, THE AVENGER (1962), made by other hands but again featuring Steve Reeves in the role of Aeneas (who doesn't show up here)!

Anyway, for an obviously low-budget spectacle (with flashback footage borrowed from HORSE), the film certainly looks good - courtesy of cinematographer Angelo Lotti, who later shot the Jess Franco masterpiece VENUS IN FURS (1968)! - while the plot is filled with amusing suspense trappings: secret passageways, dungeons, a duel to the death by a snake-infested fountain, intrigues, murders, a coveted treasure, a nick-of-time escape for the heroine - strapped to a stone slab - from being crushed to death by a descending massive piece of machinery, etc.

The cast, too, is peppered with familiar faces: he-man hero Mark Forest (whose favorite role this was, according to the "DVD Drive-in" review of Trimark Home Video's 7-film set THE ADVENTURES OF HERCULES!) doesn't alter the expression of his face much during the course of the film but, at least, he fares better here than in the earlier laugh-fest GOLIATH AND THE DRAGON (1960); Yvonne Furneaux appears as Helen Of Troy and, given that the film is largely set in Egypt, I couldn't help being reminded of her role in the classic Hammer horror THE MUMMY (1959); Massimo Serato and Alberto Lupo provide a double dose of (sometimes) ripe villainy; and Rosalba Neri (yet again) as the current Pharaoh's jilted fiancée but who takes her rival Furneaux's defences, against usurper Serato, when Helen Of Troy is accused of murdering the Egyptian ruler - and suffers the consequences for her actions!

What actually happened to the beautiful Helena after the Trojan War on the way back to Sparta to her old husband Menelaus? Homer and Herodotus give different answers.

The director Giorgio Ferroni gives us a third answer. With him, Helena (Yvonne FURNEAUX) ends up as a castaway in the land of the pharaohs, accompanied by her extremely strong bodyguard Arion (the body-built opera singer Mark FOREST). There, Massimo SERATO, Rosalba NERI and Pierre CRESSOY are both drawn into a crazy series of intrigues. It's good that Arion (in Herodotus he's still the guy with the dolphin) can fight so well! Against Cinecitta-known cascaders like Nello PAZZAFINI and the massive MESSINA brothers (Emilio and Roberto) he even manages to become the "Lion of Thebes"!

Honor where honor is due! But we know our sword and sandal films! Despite all the difficulties and surprises, the Greek beauty and her brave hero return home to Hellas. With a well-built lover like Arion at her side, Helena will be able to endure the Spartan conditions again.