Le colosse de Rome

As far as the story goes, it's another one of those that had the potential to be good but falls flat on it's own script. Cinematography is ordinary, choppy at times. Directing is questionable, some of the shots are really bad. Acting seems okay, I can't hear their real voices it's originally in Italian and it's dubbed it into English but as far as I can tell the acting is fine. The voice actors did okay with the dubbing.

It's just flat, drab. It's not bad at all but really needed a bit more action to "dress it up". What action there is in the film is fine.

Once again we have out of this world costumes for the men, the Roman soldiers mainly (as usual). Standard stuff on the women. There are some cool prop weapons as with all peplum films.

4/10

These Peplum Studios movies based on ancient historical characters always seem to be better produced than their regular run of the mill sword and sandal 60s sentimentality. The version of this movie I saw was on DVD in widescreen 16:9 format and the print and sound quality seemed to be in quite good condition considering its age. It comes across as a min-epic based on the legendary hero of Rome, Gaius Mucius Scaevola, which lives up to a lot of expectations. Some gorgeous women are in it including the beautiful Gabriella Pallota as Cloelia. Mucius or Lucius, as he sounded like in the dialogue is a warrior played by Gordon Scott, our friend who played Tarzan from 1955 to 1960. He shows off his muscle man duties like picking up "heavy" plastic logs and throwing at the enemy soldiers. The rest of the movie is filled with a whole lot of battle scenes. Some of which I'm sure I've seen before. All in all it's a decent movie. The story was solid, well paced and the acting decent. What more can a man and his kids ask for? And Yes. There were no dragons or monsters in this one Brian Carruthers.

This film was pretty good, for it's time it has a lot of sword fighting and action. I'm not sure what other reviewers are complaining about. Of course it won't have too much violence as it was made in the 60's and it isn't a horror film. Of course it won't have too much CGI because they didn't have the technology back then. Yes of course they won't have boobs because this isn't a porn film. The story is better than a lot of other Hollywood films made today, and more easy to follow, and makes sense. The costumes are awesome and much went into the armour, The 60's Italian film wasn't big enough to have too much lavish sets and it's fine as it is. A product of it's era. People complaining about the women's costumes are being silly now, because Roman women did used to dress this way and their hairstyles were the most gorgeous.

I am in agreement with the reviewer who says that most peplum pictures involving the Roman Empire start with the era of Julius Caesar and go through the pagan and Christian eras and then the fall. There are very few involving the original kingdom which was simply Rome and its suburbs and the Republic that came from it.

Modern historians are not in general agreement as to what constitutes myth and what constitutes fact in the early days. Two stories of the early Republic are combined into one film in Hero Of Rome starring former Tarzan Gordon Scott.

Scott plays Mucius Scaveola, the last name translated means left handed. He became such for an act of incredible bravura. When he went into the camp of the Etruscan king who was besieging Rome and missed assassinating him. When captured and ordered to be put to death, Mucius thrust his right hand, his sword hand into a flame and held it there for several seconds. The Etruscan king was so impressed he set him free.

The second story is the overthrow of King Tarquinis the seventh and last king of Rome. Tarquinis simply went into exile and out of history like Francois Villon or Jean Lafitte. But here the two stories are combined and as these stories are legend, the Italian filmmakers just did a little legend combining.

According to Wikipedia the Roman history Livy is the source for all of this. No other sources survive so his word has to be taken. Nevertheless Scott does a good job and Hero Of Rome is definitely a cut above the glut of peplum pictures from the early Sixties.

In the U.S., very few films have been made about Rome that were not set in the time of Julius Caesar or shortly thereafter. Hollywood's sword and sandal epics mostly have a Christian theme, which makes it difficult to get into earlier Roman history (Spartacus was probably the first exception to this rule, and encountered some resistance in Hollywood because it did not have Jesus in it).

It's interesting to see at least one picture that not only takes place before the time of Caesar and Christ, but is set when Rome was only one city among many on the Italian peninsula, and had just ousted the hated King Tarquin and formed the Republic.

However, this is not a historical film; it's peplum, and while the production values aren't rock bottom, the acting and characterizations are cardboard. I can only imagine what the dialogue was like in Italian, but with wooden English dubbing it's very campy. I got a few good laughs out of it at first.

I haven't seen many films of this genre, having missed most of the Hercules movies of the 60s. It's amusing up to a point, but as the film goes on, it gets somewhat boring.

One thing's for sure: if I'd seen this movie when I was ten years old, I would have loved it. At that age, I went for anything with Romans and swordfights in it. So at least, this flick brought back some childhood memories.