Conquérants héroïques

It's easy to forget, when watching the worst or campiest entries in the sword & sandal genre, that the Italians also produced serious historical epics in the 1960s. Here, Steve Reeves reprises his role as Aeneas, whom he previously played in the superb THE Trojan HORSE (LA GUERRA DI TROIA).

Having survived the destruction of his city, the Trojan noble and a band of survivors have made their way to Italy, where they hope to create a new life for themselves. But the region is already populated by various tribes, ruled by warlords, and Aeneas's longing for peace cannot be accomplished without recourse to battle and bloodshed.

The screenwriters take their inspiration from Virgil's epic poem The Aeneid. The scale of the sets and the rustic costumes evoke a convincing atmosphere of Bronze Age Italy. (Small details like the king's peculiar-looking crown are based on authentic artifacts). The curious customs of the natives have the ring of historical truth; the bird-shooting contest on horseback is a brilliant bit of cinema.

A part of Steve Reeves' notable legacy as a performer was his portrayal of three of the great hero figures of the ancient Greek and Roman world: Hercules (in two films), Romulus (in DUEL OF THE TITANS/ROMOLO E REMO), and Aeneas (in two films). Of the three, his Aeneas is the most complex, admirable, and ultimately heroic.

At the beginning there are some flashbacks about Aeneas and the Trojan war . As the Greek warriors under the command of Ulysses get to hide out in the Troyan horse with his fellow soldiers and get those Trojans when they take the wooden beast into their city . When they're successful and having survived the destruction of Troy , the nobleman Aeneas takes his men to getaway : Euryalus (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and Nisius (Benito Stefanelli) , as the survivors deciding to go off , making their way to Italy and found the city of Rome . As Aeneas leads escapees from the Trojan war to new land in Italy , and must deal with new threats to his people , as the powerful Aeneas and his mighty sword avenged a nation . This time muscleman Aeneas/Steve Reeves , helped by the Etruscos , leads the Trojans in battle against the Rutuli army commanded King Turno (Gianni Garco) .

This is supposedly a rendition of the Aeneid by Virgil . The film has neither expecting historical , not mythological accuracy . Acceptable Peplum with drama , noisy action , thrills , sword-fights , and resulting to be pretty entertaining . It's an adventure film with all the ingredients as sword-play , action , fights , betrayal , a love story and typical confrontation between good guys and bad guys . The film displays some impressive scenes about battles in spectacular style , including lots of extras . Here Steve Reeves plays Aeneas ; He-man Steve was a hunk who made great number of roman epic films also called ¨Musclemen movies¨ . He was the most known of a number of bodybuilder and physique model types in the early 60s and won campy notice playing Herculean characters in those campy Italian sand-and-spear epics . Ursus , Maciste , Goliath , Samson , Hércules , Atlas , Rocha ..., those Italian Muscle man producers must have had a hard time figuring out what to call the musclebound actors who played all these legendary muscleman heroes . Being other second-class Muscle men players the followings : Gordon Scott , Dan Vadis , Rock Stevens , Gordon Mitchell , Brad Harris , Samson Burke , Reg Park , Ed Fury , Richard Harrison , Kirk Morris , Alan Steel or Sergio Ciani and subsequently Lou Ferrigno . As Reeves played various Sword and Sandal movies , such as : ¨The Trojan horse¨ , and his sequel : ¨The avenger¨ , ¨The giant of Marathon¨ , ¨Goliat and the Barbarians¨ , ¨The last days of Pompeii¨ , and especially ¨Hércules¨ and ¨Hércules unchained¨ by Pietro Francisci . Although Steve also played adventure genre as ¨Pirates of the seven seas¨ , ¨ The thief of Baghdad¨ and ¨Morgan the pirate¨ . Support cast is pretty good , such as : Gianni Garco : famous Spaghetti hero as Sartana , Liana Orfei , Nerio Bernardi , Ferrari , Enzo Fiermonte and the ordinary master of arms : Benito Stefanelli who also did some of the stunts , trained the other players in fencing and choreographed the battles .

The motion picture was regularly directed by Giorgo Rivalta who produced several adventure movies as : ¨Il Cavaliere Di Maison Rouge¨ , ¨La Vendetta Dei Tughs¨ , ¨Misteri Della Giungla Nera¨ , ¨Treasure of Bengala¨ , ¨I Piombi Di Venezia¨ , ¨Son of Lagardere¨ and ¨Le Marchand De Venise¨ and directed ¨Los Cosacos¨ , ¨Il Prigioniero Del Re¨ and ¨The avenger¨ . Being co-directed by veteran filmmaker Albert Band . Albert was one of Hollywood's most prolific filmmakers who started his career in the early 50s . He began financing a number of motion pictures through the seventies and seventies and directing in Italy some films as Spaghetti westerns : ¨The tramplers¨ and ¨Massacre in grand canyon¨ . Albert helped his son , Charles Band, bring together his own production company, 'Empire Pictures' , in the early eighties , producing/directing films as : ¨Zoltan hound of Drácula¨ , ¨Ghoulies¨ , ¨Doctor Mordrid¨ , ¨Robot Jox¨ , ¨Robot wars¨ . Upon the collapse of Empire Pictures in the early nineties, Band continued to work with his son and help bring a number of low-budget and medium budget films to the Hollywood screen and direct to video releases such as : ¨Pet Shop¨ , ¨Prehysteria! 1 and 2¨ , ¨Dragonworld¨ , ¨Oblivion¨ , ¨Remote¨ , ¨Trancers¨ series , among others.

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.

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/

The Trojans in Lazio - Steve Reeves as Aeneas

This historical adventure film by Giorgio Venturini, made in 1962, was based on motifs from Vergil's (also known as: Publius Vergilius Maro) Latin epic "Aeneid". The film, called "La leggenda di Enea" in Italian and "The Avenger" in English, is the sequel to "La battaglia di Troja" by Giorgio Ferroni, also starring Steve Reeves. The filming took place in what was then Yugoslavia.

After losing the war for their hometown of Troy, the remaining Trojans flee across the Mediterranean and, under the leadership of Aeneas (Steve Reeves), reach Latium, where they finally want to settle after a long wandering. The local King Latino (Mario Ferrari) is benevolent towards the Trojan refugees and would like to allow them to settle. The leaders of the other tribes are not really happy about this, so violent conflicts arise. Important opponents are Liana Orfei as the combative Camilla (like her cousin Moira Orfei ("Ursus in the Valley of the Lions"), she comes from an Italian family of artists and was seen several times in Italian films of the time, including alongside Lex Barker in "I pirati della costa"), Gianni Garko as the frighteningly cunning Turnus and Maurice Poli as his willing henchman. Euryalus (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) and the beautiful Lavinia (Carla Marlier) stand by Aeneas and his Trojans.

With the powerful fight scenes, in which not only Steve Reeves can shine as the title hero, and the relatively large number of characters with their different ways of acting for a peplum or sandal film, this film strives to achieve a certain level in order to do justice to the literary original become. This is also quite successful. However, it's all too easy to see the tricks in film, for example when Steve Reeves' double is used or individual fighters don't seem as motivated as they should be.

The end of the fighting shown in the film creates the basis for the later emergence of the city of Rome, which would then result in Roman world domination for almost a whole millennium. The Trojan Aeneas is considered a pioneer of later Rome, which is what Virgil's "Aeneid" is also about. The area around today's Rome is still called Lazio, which can be seen, for example, in the name of the well-known football club Lazio Roma.

With slight reservations, this film is not only worth seeing for fans of the peplum genre!