Sword-and-sandal - Sound Film Era

Sound Film Era

The Italian film industry released several historical films in the early sound era, such as the big-budget Scipione l'africano (The Defeat of Hannibal) in 1937. In 1949, the postwar Italian film industry remade Fabiola (which had been previously filmed twice in the silent era). The film was released in the United Kingdom and in the United States in 1951 in an edited, English-dubbed version.

During the 1950s, a number of American historical epics shot in Italy were released. In 1951, MGM producer Sam Zimbalist cleverly used the lower production costs, use of frozen funds and the expertise of the Italian film industry to shoot the large scale epic Quo Vadis in Rome. In addition to its fictional account linking the Great Fire of Rome, the Persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire and Emperor Nero, the film featured a mighty protagonist named Ursus. MGM also planned Ben Hur to be filmed in Italy as early as 1952.

Riccardo Freda's Sins of Rome was filmed in 1953 and released by RKO in an edited, English-dubbed version the following year. Unlike Quo Vadis, there were no American actors or production crew. The Anthony Quinn film Attila (directed by Pietro Francisci in 1954), the Kirk Douglas epic Ulysses (co-directed by an uncredited Mario Bava in 1954) and Helen of Troy (directed by Robert Wise with Sergio Leone as an uncredited second unit director in 1955) were the first of the big peplum films of the 1950s. Riccardo Freda directed another peplum, Theodora, Slave Empress in 1954, starring his wife Gianna Maria Canale. Howard Hawks directed his Land of the Pharaohs (starring Joan Collins) in Italy and Egypt in 1955. Robert Rossen made his Alexander the Great in Egypt in 1956, with a music score by famed Italian composer Mario Nascimbene.

To cash in on the success of the Kirk Douglas film Ulysses, Pietro Francisci planned to make a film about Hercules, but searched unsuccessfully for years for a physcially convincing yet experienced actor. His daughter spotted American bodybuilder Steve Reeves in the American film Athena and he was hired to play the mighty demigod.

The genre's instantaneous growth began with the 1959 U.S. theatrical release of Hercules, a 1957 Italian/ French co-production. American producer Joseph E. Levine acquired the U.S. distribution rights for $120,000, spent $1 million promoting the film and made more than $5 million profit. This spawned the 1959 Steve Reeves sequel Hercules Unchained, the 1959 re-release of Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1951), and literally dozens of imitations that followed in their wake. Italian filmmakers resurrected their 1920s Maciste character in a brand new 1960s sound film series (1960–1964), followed rapidly by Ursus, Samson, Goliath, Sandokan and various other mighty-muscled heroes. These films all featured similar bodybuilder stars such as Reg Park, Gordon Scott, Mark Forest, Brad Harris, Dan Vadis, and Alan Steel. European audiences tended to prefer an Anglo-American in the lead, so Italian bodybuilders would adopt English pseudonyms for the screen (Sergio Ciani became Alan Steel, for example).

In the formulaic plots common to many of the films, two women vied for the affection of the bodybuilder hero: the good love interest (a damsel in distress needing rescue), and an evil femme fatale queen who sought to dominate the hero. The films often featured an ambitious ruler who would ascend the throne by murdering whomever stood in his path, and often it was only the muscular hero who could depose him. Most of the films involved an impending clash between two warring populations, one civilized and the other evilly barbaric. Thus many pepla begin with the scene of a peaceful, defenseless village being burned to the ground by a wild barbarian horde. For their musical content, most films contained a well-choreographed belly-dancing sequence or a colorful ballet, meant to underline the pagan decadence of the villains. The contrived plots, poorly overdubbed dialogue, novice acting skills of the bodybuilder leads, and primitive special effects that were often inadequate to depict the mythological creatures on screen all conspire to give these films a certain camp appeal now.

To be sure, however, many of the films enjoyed widespread popularity among general audiences, and had production values that were typical for popular films of their day. Some films included frequent reuse of the impressive film sets that had been created for Ben Hur and Cleopatra. Although many of the bigger budget pepla were released theatrically in the USA, fourteen of them were released directly to Embassy Pictures television in a syndicated TV package called The Sons of Hercules. The movies were made into a series of sorts by splicing on the same opening and closing theme song and newly-designed voice-over narration that desperately attempted to link the protagonist of each film to the Hercules mythos, since few American viewers had a familiarity with Italian film heroes such as Maciste or Ursus. These films ran on Saturday afternoons in the 1960s. Often ridiculed for their low budgets and bad English dubbing, several of them have been subjects for the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment.