The Colossus Of Rhodes (1961) **1/2

If Mario Bava had made The Colossus Of Rhodes (1961) it would have been shorter and campier, with more interesting lighting. I mention this because Bava made similar films around the same time (see Hercules In The Haunted World released the same year). As it is, TCOR is kind of campy but not in an over the top enough way that demands the attention of the viewer.

Much like Spartacus (1960) (my review here) for Stanley Kubrick, there is no Sergio Leone stamp whatsoever in TCOR. It very much feels like a work for hire job. It seems clear the producers were cashing in on the sword-and-sandal craze and I suppose I’m just not a great lover of the genre. That’s OK, not everyone hits it out of the park with their debut and Leone only made six more features, basically all of them masterpieces, so it’s no big deal (technically 1959's The Last Days Of Pompeii was Leone's debut but he went uncredited).

The filmmaking in TCOR is very technically proficient but its a slog and the dubbing is particularly distracting since most of the cast spoke Italian. There is a longer Italian version that runs 2 hours and 22 mins but truthfully I can’t imagine sitting through an additional 13 minutes of this film. I had seen TCOR once before and recalled not being enamored with it but honestly it was even more boring than I remembered—this tale of bronzed men and a bronze statute is a predictable, sanitized snoozefest.

You can find my Sergio Leone Films Ranked list here.

You can find my Top 20 Directors list here.