Original title: Maciste, Gladiatore di Sparta
Peplum. Italy/France. Starring Mark Forest, Marilù Tolo, Elisabetta Fanti, Claudio Undari & Jacques Stany. Directed by Mario Caiano.
EVC (Holland). English dubbed. Widescreen.
The gladiator Maciste, played by Mark Forest, fights a gorilla and saves some christians from the evil and cunning roman emperor. One of the more entertaining christians Vs. Praetorians flicks out there. 3/5
I really enjoyed this one especially the Emperor character. He was hilarious always eating and always casually threatening to have someone killed.
SvaraRaderaI recently watched (haven't yet suffered through the whole thing) THE MAGNIFICENT GLADIATOR starring Forest and directed by Brescia. It's mostly whole chunks of the above movie with some added scenes around it. Some of the scenes don't totally match up as Forest is already a (very naive and happy) gladiator for the Emperor while he's captured in Brescia's movie.
Most of the same cast returns and Tolo looks simply ravishing in the patchwork follow up. Maybe they had some left over money from GLADIATOR OF SPARTA and decided to make a movie from that? I assume it was Brescia's first, or one of his first solo efforts considering he often worked as Caiano's AD.
Intersting. I've seen both films (and yes, Brescia's film sure was dull) but didn't notice this before. Perhaps because I saw MAGNIFICENT GLADIATOR first. Your theory seems perfectly reasonable - many cheap producers at the time made up "new" films based on older footage and some cheaply shot new scenes. The results were almost always atrocioussly bad, but sometimes quite hilarious in their total disregard of logic and continuity...
SvaraRaderaAlfonso Brescia may have been a hack, but i'm really fond of some of his cheapies... especially those with fantasy- and/or sci-fi influences often turned out very entertaining. His peplum CONQUEROR OF ATLANTIS is one my favorites and I adore his endless cycle of thrashy STAR WARS-clones. His sword and sorcery flick IRON WARRIOR is fun too.
CONQUEROR was entertaining, most especially Piero Lulli. He was the best thing about that movie, IMO, with his Ming the Merciless outfit. He plays a similar role in BEAST OF BABYLON AGAINST THE SON OF HERCULES, very flamboyant and he duels with Gordon Scott at the end, too.
SvaraRaderaIRON WARRIOR I thought was good for the first 15 minutes or so, then I got tired of it rather quickly. Those Ator movies are pretty hilarious.