Dreadfully Boring

An action-packed slog

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Got to give this ultra low budget, horrendously dubbed Italian Sword and Sandal clunker credit for trying something different.Adds a heavy dosage of Science- Fiction to the mix.The baddie resembles Bela Lugosi, the hero a less handsome Charlton Heston and the " Giant" to me at least resembled Harry H Corbett's werewolf from " Carry On Screaming" even though this was made three years before that.The climatic destruction of Atlantis takes place in near darkness, to hide the cheap cardboard sets and lack of them.Pretty bad, but i almost felt sorry for them, they did the best they could.

This film struck me as being about three hours long. I don't mind Italian Peplum films so much (I'm not a rabid fan of them either, mind), but this film had serious pacing issues that caused me to either be mildly interested in what was going on to drooling slightly while having anxiety dreams about a bunch of Czech nurses wanting to irrigate my colon.Justin Beber lookalike Gorgon Mitchell is Orbo, some eco-warrior all out to give some guy a guilt trip about his scientific experiments in the city of Metropolis. Old' Gord is all out to prove that recycling, sustainable energy sources, and so on is the way forward, but this film was made in 1961 and the bad guy does not care in the slightest.My problem with this film is that it's not very good. Things that should be exciting are dragged on forever (like fighting bad guys, the eco-disaster, all that crap). I don't mind Gordon Mitchell, but...I don't know (I'll have to add that bit in later but I need a pish).This is one of them Mill Creek films you can pick up for next to nothing so don't worry about it. Good bad guy kill ratio however.

All told, this is a most interesting effort. True, the novelty of the stylized, Caligari-like sets tends to wear thin with repetitious use (their like has not been seen since 1939's "Son of Frankenstein"), and the climax doesn't quite come off. (The stratagem employed is too obvious. One brief shot through an archway shows us what should have been done throughout). But the brilliance of the interrogation scene alone, with the camera swooping in for enormous close-ups, makes this movie a must-see for connoisseurs. Director Umberto Scarpelli – back in 1961 – has actually come up with an original device. He also makes exciting use of a 360 degree pan, plus an elaborate deployment of triangular masking. Music scoring, film editing and photography are likewise first class.

In the year 20,000 B.C. on the continent of Atlantis, in the city of Metropolis King Yotar rules a very scientifically advanced, yet inhumane, civilisation. A muscle bound hero Obro arrives there to attempt to put an end to this reign of terror.This sword and sandal flick is a little different from most in the peplum genre in that it is set way before the Roman or even Greek times. Not only this but it's one of those specific entries in the genre, like Hercules Against the Moon Men, which incorporates a sci-fi element into its fantasy scenario. In this case a super-advanced scientific civilisation and a King who conducts crazed experiments on his son in a manner similar to a mad scientist. He also puts the hero Obro through various tests, such as a gladiatorial fight with a murderous giant and an encounter with a group of hairy savages. But in essence this one is still basically very similar in feel to the other strong man peplum movies featuring the likes of Maciste and Hercules. As such, Giant of Metropolis is one which drags a lot of the time and gets quite tedious on occasion, yet is interspersed with memorable scenes, while its sets and costuming ensure that it will always have enough production value about it to ensure it will always retain some watch-ability and kitsch value.