The Fall of the Roman Eye Candy

Dennis Harvey tracks the rise and fall of the muscled sword and sandal genre.

Hercules

This year alone we will see two big-budget Hercules movies, plus this spring’s 300 sequel and the ancient action-intrigue-then-volcano popcorn epic Pompeii. That’s a whole lot of musclebound Mediterranean men in togas throwing spears at each other—more than we’ve seen since the brief eighties heyday triggered by Ahhnold’s original Conan the Barbarian.

That latter era featured a whole lot of cheap Italian-produced knockoff of the Hollywood Conan. Remember Ator, the Fighting Eagle or Yor, the Hunter from the Future? Of course you don’t. But they were an example of cinematic full-circledom, because the most famous such cycle was practically 100 percent Italian: Those umpteen “sword and sandal” adventures made through the mid-1960s in the wake of surprise international smash Hercules (1958), which starred American bodybuilder Steve Reeves.

So many such movies were made that they eventually choked on their own flexed biceps, even as they were being replaced in the international marketplace by a new Italian exploitation-flick glut: Spaghetti westerns, which also frequently starred slumming American hunks. (Albeit skinnier ones, like Clint Eastwood.)

But Italy’s screen infatuation with chiseled demigods hefting pillars to free the slaves from tyranny, or whatever, goes back even further—though its earliest such endeavors aren’t so well remembered today. Of course it makes sense that Italy should have used the medium from earliest days to export visions of its own fabulous ancient history and mythology: No events and beliefs of 1,500 to 2,500 years ago are better known around the world (or at least in the West) than those of the Roman Empire. Even if they don’t know the specifics, your average viewer today probably has a general grasp on concepts like Nero’s fiddle, Cupid = Love, or Poseidon being all wet. And decades ago, when students were much more extensively schooled in “the classics,” the gods and goddesses of Olympus would have been figures as familiar to the popular imagination as Peter Pan or Romeo & Juliet.

Fandor | Read the Full Article

The Fall of the Roman Eye Candy

Fandor | Read the Full Article

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