Highly Overrated But Still Good

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is not a 'Colossus,' 'Ursus', or 'Hercules' sword and sandal movie. Though using a lot of the settings of these Italian epics, we get instead a typical Italian low sex comedy of a (literal) Battle Between the Sexes: Amazon women and Greek men.It does have a few brief inspired scenes of gender reversal with the enslaved men complaining about their housework to their returning battle weary warrior Amazon female captors, but this wonderful kind of satire does not dominate the film, which unfortunately consists mostly of the male actors mugging for the camera, particularly the lead Rod Taylor himself (with his dialog dubbed by some one else).The script, in fact, is primarily the product of Ennio De Concini, who went on to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for 'Divorce Italian Style' the following year (a film which also features Daniella Rocca, who plays Rod Taylor's Amazon 'wife' here). A prodigious screen writer of over 160 films, De Concini was responsible for some of our other favorite remainder bin cheapies such as 'Assignment Outer Space' (1960), 'Battle of the Worlds' (1961) (both credited to his SF pseudonym 'Vassily Petrov'), 'The Colossus of Rhodes' (1961) with Rory Calhoun, and the Mario Bava classic 'Black Sunday' (1960) among his many, many credits.The other American actor, Ed Fury, who plays the supposed 'Colossus' hero Glauco, starred in three 'Ursus' movies as well among his six Italian 'epics'. Rod Taylor's efforts at comedy seem mostly too silly and effete, probably the result of the direction. Rather than being enjoyably camp, this is more of a "Finally it's over!" movie. The eclectic score of various musical styles (a lot of which sounds like 'McHale's Navy', or 'F Troop', type comic xylophone march music) tells you from the opening credits that this film is a total comedy, and not a muscleman flick with comic relief. The humor, and the film itself, come off as tedious rather than funny. I'll generously give it a 2 for the gender reversal elements.

What do you want from this. We have an hour and a half of mugging for the camera. The characters are tiresome and inconsistent. They struggle to get a laugh. Seeing Rod Taylor prancing around made me sad. After all, he was in "The Birds" and "The Time Machine," among other films. How did he end up in Italy doing this? The whole plot is convoluted, anything-for-a-laugh material. At one point all the men are using clichéd "woman" talk about their cleaning, cooking, and ironing. They talk in an affected (homosexual stereotype) way. Of course, this is badly dubbed so how can we know. The women are one way, then another, and back again. Are they warriors or are they only interested in one thing. There's even a jousting scene. How's that for your Greek standard battle? Eventually, the rules at this time have the men winning out like we knew they would. But they are a bunch of baboons who have no reason to gain anything. And these marvelous warrior women lose all their culture and their strength for these guys. It's about as bad as it gets.

This film is strikingly similar to (and, incredibly, even worse than) Terence Young's THE AMAZONS (1974), which I watched only last month. Rod Taylor, who had just become a star thanks to George Pal's screen version of H.G. Wells' THE TIME MACHINE (1960), unwisely chose to follow it up with this turkey; his performance is embarrassing – especially the lamentable attempts at comedy – and, in fact, comes off like a cut-rate Tony Curtis! Likewise, Ed Fury makes very little impression as the proverbial muscleman (and, presumably, the Colossus of the title – though his character is actually named Glauco, even in the English-dubbed version!).As for the women, here we have: a rather unattractively made-up Dorian Gray (a regular fixture of Toto' comedies, though she also appeared in one film apiece by Fellini and Antonioni!); Daniela Rocca (best known as the mousy wife Marcello Mastroianni wants to get rid of in Pietro Germi's DIVORCE – Italian STYLE [1961]), whose character is constantly falling flat on her face for no apparent reason!; and Gianna Maria Canale (who appeared in countless sword-and-sandal titles but also starred in the first Italian horror film, I VAMPIRI [1956], co-directed by Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava), who's been saddled with the rather thankless role of the Amazon Queen who must fulfill her destiny by remaining a spinster! Truly, this has to be one of the worst films ever - which prompted director Bertrand Tavernier, then a film critic, to call it "one of the funniest of Italian comedies"! - which, from the very first shot (in which a trumpeter loses his grip on his instrument!), gives you an idea of the clumsiness you are about to witness – with the inappropriate 'modern' score (including the dance routines that are a cross between Busby Berkeley and WEST SIDE STORY [1961]!) and the hilarious dubbing (particularly during the one scene where Tiberio Murgia, so memorable as Claudia Cardinale's jealous elder brother in BIG DEAL ON MADONNA STREET [1958], appears) featuring prominently among its highlights…er…lowpoints!

This movie is cool! It's kind of dumb but it is really cool. Like, there are these dudes, and they are like, Gladiators & stuff?? And they go on a boat somewhere, I don't know where, and it like, crashes & stuff. The guys all find themselves stranded on this island, you know, and it's like BABE CITY!! There are only hot Italian B-actresses on the whole island, and they all dress like the sluts in CALIGULA only nobody gets cut in half or has Macolm McDowall put his ring where the sun don't shine on them. I like all female society movies, especially when they are populated by creamy, olive skinned, sharp nosed and firm bosomed Italian actresses who's voices are dubbed into English. So I consider myself lucky: I hope someday you get to find a movie that looks like it was pretty much made with you in mind.So like, these Gladiator dudes are kind of funny. They have all these heroic missions and are all like, former soldiers or something who treat each other like they are closer than brothers. And they all dress like Freddy Mercury from that Queen tour after NEWS OF THE WORLD, which was such a cool album. But what I mean is that, like, they all run around in tights and leather tunics, have big spears and big muscles and always look sweaty or oiled, yet not one of them is gay. Not even by a long shot. The movie is even kind of a silly comedy at times with wacky noise effects and a talking parrot, but there isn't any of the stuff that Oliver Stone found so necessary. And everywhere you look, BABES!!And what babes they are. Jessica Simpson and Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman are like, twits from the underclass study hall compared to the graceful, full figured 1960 era knockouts populating this very sexist and male oriented entertainment. The women throw themselves at these guys, sometimes quite literally, and since there are only about eight of them and a whole island full of these women I would expect that we'd see a working example of that male to female ratio thing that Peter Sellers talked about in DR. STRANGELOVE about needing women with exceedingly attractive characteristics, which sort of makes sense if you hope to re-populate the world with the President and maybe the guys who run Haliburton. Maybe this is where they got their inspiration for Strangelove's speech. Because with an estimated female to male ratio of about 35 to 1 -- and all of them hot -- these Gladiators had better not be gay, or else there are going to be a lot of unhappy faces in the morning.Look for this movie on a 50 Movie/12 DVD box set from Treeline Films called SCI FI CLASSICS: It's a mucky fullframe English print that looks like someone used it to hang their laundry on before the video transfer was done, but it beats the hell out of anything that's been released this year in the theaters so far, and there are what, 48 more to go??7/10