The Worst Film Ever

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The irony of The Fall of the Roman Empire is that no one wanted to be in it. Kirk Douglas turned it down for $1.5 million, an incredible offer in 1964! If you watch the three-hour movie, you'll understand why. Kirk Douglas was able to recognize a terrible script when he read one. Ben Barzman, Basilio Franchina, and Philip Yordan's script is so bad, it's hard to believe through the dozens of drafts and rewrites all film scripts must endure, no one could have improved it before the actors started speaking. For example, Stephen Boyd sees Sophia Loren after a long absence and tells he she's beautiful. "Beautiful?" she repeats. "What . . . does that mean?" As another example, in one of the plentiful battle scenes, Stephen tries to convince everyone to stop fighting, but the angry mob of bad guys won't listen. "Let us die killing them!" one extra shouts. The dialogue is so stilted and mostly unnecessary, that even when the tedious fight scenes are over, you almost long for them to return. In a film that could have easily been an hour shorter, you'd think I'd be grateful to have three hours to stare at Stephen Boyd's handsome face. As much as I love him, and as beautiful as Sophia Loren is, Christopher Plummer ruins the movie-with help from the script and the ridiculous rip-offs from Ben-Hur. In the beginning of the film when Chris and Stephen are reunited after years of being apart, they embrace and drink a toast with their arms entwined. I realize that was a Roman custom, but since the scene was so similar to Ben-Hur, it's hard to take it seriously. It's the same with the chariot race, in which Chris-the Messala to Stephen's Ben-Hur-tries to hook his wheel under Stephen's to break his chariot. When that doesn't work, he actually starts whipping him; sound familiar? Unfortunately, even if you've never seen Ben-Hur and could watch this movie with fresh eyes, Christopher Plummer still ruins the movie. He speaks nearly every line with a sing-song lilt, and he prances around as if he was a stereotypical French fashion designer, instead of a Roman leader. His performance is so horrible, it's shocking that he had a career afterwards, let alone had to be coerced into taking the role of Captain Von Trapp the very next year.Dimitri Tiomkin's score earned an Oscar nod, and when you listen to the soundtrack, it sounds very pretty, exciting, and Roman. Hearing it while watching the film feels a little incongruous. Dimitri may have come up with a pretty theme, but he probably wasn't watching the movie while he wrote it. Music buffs might not want to sit through the entire movie, and despite the supporting cast including Alec Guinness, James Mason, Omar Sharif, Mel Ferrer, John Ireland, Anthony Quayle, and Finlay Currie, movie buffs might want to either.

Epic but not that great.Massive in its scale, sets, ambition and running time this movie is more about showing off how big you can make a movie than how well you can make a movie. Plot isn't entirely historically accurate, and is in some ways a soap opera with historical figures (and many fictional characters). This isn't helped by a fairly unconvincing performance in the lead role by Stephen Boyd. Wooden, lame and just plain irritating.Christopher Plummer and Sophia Loren are OK. Best performances come from James Mason and Alec Guinness, who both bring a suitable amount of gravitas to the movie.There is some degree of truth to the plot, and the battle scenes are great, and these are what make the movie not a total waste of time.

This movie had one thing going for it - incredible special effects to depict Roman architecture. The Roman fort in what is now Germany was a masterpiece inside and out. The stone work, the ramp whereby horses and chariots galloped right up to the gate, the log bridge over the gorge....looked very real. I don't know if it was historically accurate or not, but it was very impressive. The Roman temples and various government buildings in the center of Rome were fantastic - what a visual display - it was unmatched in any other toga epic. To this day, such realism has not been achieved again. The same goes for the detailed Roman legions. Now for the bad part - who exactly were the Romans up against - Barbarians or cave men? The Barbarians all had the dumbest wigs and beards. They lumbered around and seemed to fight with sticks. Then, there was the totally inane dialogue, which was more stilted than an oil rig in the Atlantic. Whenever Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd were together, the lovey-dovey talk with reverent Biblical epic overtones was too funny. Stephen Boyd was a blond, probably so you wouldn't confuse him with Mesalah from Ben Hur. Sophia Loren was caked with oily makeup and seemed to have the same somber facial expression throughout. She seemed like a large, disoriented amphibian. Christopher Lee at least was interesting because he was evil. There were two instances where scenes from Ben Hur were revisited - the scene when Boyd and Lee reunite was very similar to when Messalah and Be Hur rekindled their friendship after many years. The chariot race from Ben Hur was revisited when Boyd and Lee raced off in a chariot "fight", whipping each other and bumping axles along the way. The film "Gladiator" with Russell Crowe borrowed half of "Fall of the Roman Empire". Same scenario where the dying emperor in Germany appoints his general over his son to succeed him. Same psychotic Commodus character. Same duel to the death as gladiators. One more thing - the musical score in Fall of the Roman Empire was very inappropriate. Seemed like the soundtrack for "The Sound of Music" or "My Fair Lady". Really bad.

The tutti orchestra blares Elgar. The leather-clad actors declaim with hand outstretched. The cameras pan across the Roman Empire. I yawn. Why, you ask? The beginning is all exposition. Actors usually are hired to show, not tell. Possibly it gets better later on, but as a member of the Baby Boomers, I haven't the nanoseconds to waste on British-accented, slowly developing pseudo-history. Varus, give me back my legions. Then give me back the time I spent watching this. The tutti orchestra blares Elgar. The leather-clad actors declaim with hand outstretched. The cameras pan across the Roman Empire. I yawn. Why, you ask? The beginning is all exposition. Actors usually are hired to show, not tell. Possibly it gets better later on, but as a member of the Baby Boomers, I haven't the nanoseconds to waste on British-accented, slowly developing pseudo-history. Varus, give me back my legions. Then give me back the time I spent watching this.