Slave of Rome (1961)
During Julius Caesar's invasion of Gallia: The Gauls have broken their treaty with the Romans. Marcus Valerius and his friend are sent to punish them. Antea's father wants to have peace with Rome, having once been there and acknowledging their superior culture, but Lysircus forces a severely anti-Roman politic. When her father is killed by him in treachery, Antea joins the Romans who have to evade into a swamp. She falls in love with Marcus. Will she forsake her people forever?
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The movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
The movie really just wants to entertain people.
It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.
One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.
SLAVE OF ROME is an above-average historical adventure from Italy, detailing a war between the heroic Romans and the evil Gauls. The central plot is complicated somewhat by a love affair between the daughter of a Gaulish general and a Roman soldier sent to wipe out the locals. This film boosts vivid colour photography, a wealth of vibrant action set-pieces in which the swords and arrows fly freely, and a handful of attempts at characterisation which are unexpected. Mario Petri makes a solidly imposing bad guy as always, Rossana Podesta is a picture of beauty as the love interest, Giacomo Rossi Stuart is all pomp as Claudius, and Guy Madison the usual square-jawed hero. It's not quite good enough to be one of the best of its era, but SLAVE OF ROME certainly holds its own against contemporary international fare.
Slave of Rome has remained an elusive Video to locate, so far , even eluding the various merchants of vintage video, including Sinister Cinema. This was an exciting and fun "sword and sandal" movie that used to get played to death on Network TV back in the '60s. Besides Guy Madison, who was familiar at that time from the Western series, Wild Bill Hickock, it featured the stunning Rosanna Podesta, who at that time was probably in her absolute prime. For fans of this genre of movie, it was a refreshing break from the "sons of Hercules" style, in that the main character, although very swashbuckling, was very human and not a demi-god of any sort, and as such, his vulnerability made for more plot tension. JOHN G