Walt at Random

Two Gladiators (orig I due gladiatori), 1964, color. Mario Caiano (dir.), Richard Harrison, Moira Orfei, Alberto Farnese, Mimmo Palmara. 1:40 (1:33)

A mix of good and bad. Good: It’s widescreen (but not Enhanced for DVD, so your player has to do the zooming). Bad: It’s sort-of color: reds, blacks, occasionally a bit of blue-green, but rarely a full spectrum. Good: lots of mass swordfights. Bad: Really badly done swordfights with three heroes overcoming ridiculous odds on a regular basis.

It’s about the twin sons of Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, one supposedly dead at birth but actually, well, supposed to have been killed but we all know how that goes. The supposed only son, Commodus, engages in gladiatorial matches (really?) until he learns of his father’s death, at which point he becomes emperor and looks to rival Caligula for evil. As you might expect, the other son (Lucius) wins out in the end (in the arena, with the two sons both dressed alike and wearing identical helmets, making it effectively impossible to tell them apart). Who knew that a hundred peasants armed mostly with torches could defeat whole hordes of Roman centurions?

Not terrible. $1.

Ursus in the Land of Fire (orig. Ursus nella terra di fuoco), color, 1963. Giorgio Simonelli (dir.), Ed Fury, Luciana Gilli, Adriano Micantoni, Claudia Mori. 1:27.

This flick falls into that special category of Paper Bag Flicks—one where it’s fortunate that man-size paper bags didn’t exist in the times being portrayed, since Ed Fury certainly could not have acted his way out of one. He can, however, defeat (and usually kill) any number of enemies at once, except when it suits the “plot” for him to be captured. (Apparently reviewers like the fact that he smiles more than most Hercules-style heroes, but to me he comes off as insipid. Diana is pretty good.)Another problem: this was a wide-screen picture (very wide screen, 2.35:1) converted to TV size by, apparently, just taking the center of the print: the credits are unreadable and during certain conversations you can only see part of the heroine’s face.

The plot? The sleeve has it wrong, at least in part: Ursus, leader of a village of peaceful shepherds on one side of a lake, doesn’t battle monsters except for the human kind. The setup is that a more military tribe lives on the other side of the lake and its evil general claims that for any shepherd to cross the lake is punishable by death. The beautiful Princess Diana, out riding near the lake, has her horse spooked by a rattlesnake; the horse throws her into the lake—and she seems unable to swim but can call for help. (Noteworthy because in two later scenes she’s a champion swimmer in the same lake.) Ursus, wandering nearby (half-naked as usual), saves her…and is, of course, then arrested and accused of trying to seize power (Diana was unconscious at the time, apparently fainting as soon as he’s saved her). Anyway…he escapes, but the not-so-bad king is convinced by the evil general (aided by Diana’s evil female cousin, who vouches for the general’s story) to let him go after Ursus and, what the heck, set the village to flames, kill all the women and children and take the men as slaves.

Beyond that, the general kills the king and seizes the throne, with Diana somehow fleeing (and meeting upwith Ursus, the two of course instantly falling in love) and the cousin marrying the general. But the people hate him, so he arranges a tournament to win their love. It’s an interesting tournament: any challenger in danger of beating the general/king’s champion gets an arrow in the back from the sidelines. Ursus shows up disguised, wins the competition against absurd odds and is immediately enslaved to help turn one honking big gristmill.

More stuff and nonsense having to do with the Land of Fire, a volcanic region with its own priesthood that the general defiled. The climax involves, in addition to more feats of strength and One Good Man Against Any Number of Bad Ones fights, the mountain’s revenge for that defilement and the people finally rising up against their evil ruler. I’ve skipped lots of plot, but all ends happily. Lots of action, zero plausibility, volcano erupting, a painfully bad actor as hero and, well, I’ll give it $1.

Cleopatra’s Daughter (orig. Il sepolcro dei re), 1960, color. Fernando Cerchio (dir.), Debra Paget, Ettore Manni, Erno Crisa. 1:49 (1:29).

The perils of Shila, daughter of Cleopatra, captured and forced into a dynastic marriage with Pharaoh Nemarat—under the vengeful eye of his mother and with the court physician desirous of Shila. That’s about as coherent as the “plot” gets, and the Big Dramatic Action seems mostly limited to a grave robbery and peculiar partial revolt. Let’s see: there’s also a poisoning, induced deathlike coma, several stabbings (rarely quite sure who’s stabbed or doing the stabbing)…and mostly lots of moping around.

The good? Halfway-decent print, although you’re getting just the center of a very widescreen “Ultrascope” movie. (That is: 1.33:1 of a 2.35:1 flick.) The bad? Pretty much everything else. Maybe the missing 20 minutes would help. This came off as a mediocre soap opera, but more confused, and with a few minutes of dramatic special effects. $0.50.

David and Goliath (orig. David e Golia), 1960, color. Ferdinando Baldi and Richard Pottier (dirs.), Orson Welles, Ivica Pajer, Eleojora Rossi Drago, Massimo Serato. 1:53 [1:32]

Orson Welles? Really? Yes, albeit an old, overly-large, shambling version of Welles as King Saul, the voice is intact. (Welles directed his own scenes—and he’s in quite a few.) Otherwise, this story, “freely adapted from the Bible” (as the credits say) is to some extent a typical tale of betrayal (Abner wants King Saul’s throne and is scheming with one of Saul’s daughters to get it), heroism (David, because David) and lots of action—except that in this case nearly all the action is in the last 15 minutes.

Slow and talky, but great scenery and a pretty decent print. If you can buy the premise that the Philistine army, ten times the size of the Isrealite guards, would actually give up (after its king breaks his promise to fall back if David slays Goliath, because what good Evil King wouldn’t immediately renege on a promise?) just because the king is slain…well, never mind. The extra 21 minutes would probably help. As pans & scans of very widescreen flicks go, this one isn’t terrible. All things considered, $1.25.