arthur_tafero There were several attempts at doing Roman Empire movies in the 50s and 60s. Several of them were good, and others were not so good. The tagline: "with a cast of thousands!" would often accompany these types of films. This one would have read: "with a cast of hundreds!" because it was obviously a low-budget film. Low-Budget films should not attempt epics. Alan Ladd, a fine actor, was horribly miscast in this one, and could not escape his cowboy persona. The whole film had almost all the soldiers as calvary, when historically, the opposite was true. It was the Roman LEGIONS, not calvary. The direction and screenplay was a mess; it was all over the place. The dialogue was unintentionally laughable, with the exception of one good line for the entire film "No man really understands a woman". But a film cannot hold up with one good line of dialogue. The female lead was some horse-faced woman who was supposed to be sexy. Every other woman in the film was better looking and sexier than she was. Let's not even mention the hilarious attempts at acting by most of the cast. This was an epic, all right; an epic disaster.

trimbolicelia Fair early 60's Italian-made, English-dubbed Sword-and-Sandal film starring Alan Ladd. Supposedly a historic episode in the early days of Rome about the battle for dominance of the land. Alan Ladd is the hero, first reviled erroneously by his people, then cheered as a champion for the Romans. Typical of the genre, but kind of boring. These films are better when there are monsters to battle. Alan Ladd, sadly, looks tired and old. He obviously took this role because he needed the work. He's really not the ancient history hero type. The DVD-R I obtained is very good quality. Probably the best available. Recommended for fans of this genre.

Rainey Dawn Romans and the Albans both have been loosing way to many men in battles. 3 brothers from each are chosen in the end to fight to the death in one final battle to settle the dispute but it doesn't quite go as planned.This is rather drab film. Routine peplum with nothing special to add to the genre, it only gives us one more history peplum to throw into the mix - and a very bland account of it.Cheers for the costuming and prop eye-candy, boo for the tedious way of telling us the story.2/10

MARIO GAUCI This international co-production tells of a "famous" duel between two sets of three brothers (one from each side of the Romans and the Barbarians) which was to decide the fate of the ongoing war between them. While the production values sounded promising on paper – co-director Terence Young, American actors Alan Ladd and Robert Keith (whose last film this turned out to be), French star Jacques Sernas, ex-Fellini alumnus Franco Fabrizi, four noteworthy screenwriters, etc – the film comes off as a rather talky and undernourished affair which cannot hope to do justice to its mythical subject.A visibly tired Alan Ladd, then, is evidently miscast and seems to be playing his role as if he has just stepped in from the American West rather than being at the head of a Roman legion! The hokey, would-be tragic "Romeo and Juliet" subplot involving Ladd's sister and Barbarian Fabrizi doesn't help matters either; on the plus side, however, is a sequence early on where Ladd is teared at by a pack of hungry wolves and the forest hunt by the three barbarian brothers for Ladd (after having killed his two siblings) which rebounds on themselves – with our hero, naturally, emerging victorious at the end to walk off into the sunset with his beloved.