Il gladiatore che sfidò l'impero

CHALLENGE OF THE GLADIATOR is an above average Peplum with many things going for it: excellent cast, excellent music score, solid if workman-like direction, excellent production values. The film could have been great but it's not because of one main problem: the story/script.

I don't think I've seen such a daft script in any Peplum. It's almost impossible to explain. There's Spartacus (played by humongous Peter Lupus). There are Romans trying to invade Thrace. Those Romans are lead by Metello, who's controlled by a corrupt Senator who hires a gladiator who looks like Nero. The Senator has plans to usurp the real Nero with the look-alike but also wants to get hold of a treasure that's somewhere in Thrace, which Spartacus has secretly hidden in a cave somewhere. To make matters more unbelievable, Spartacus falls in love with the daughter of the evil Senator. Anyway, that's the most I could figure out from it. There's also some plot point about an emerging Christian religion. Anyway, there are so many improbabilities in the story that I just couldn't take it seriously for one second.

There are several highlights in this film, certainly when Peter Lupus is chained to a torture device. What's a Peplum without an over-the-top torture scene? All in all, this film is fairly good, even if it's a bit difficult to see beefy Lupus as Spartacus. If you overlook the wonky script, this is one of the better Peplums for sure.

Although the Italian cinema of the 1960s was noted for taking light-hearted liberties with history, this one beats the lot. Spartacus, who died in 71 BC, somehow returns to thwart a Nero impersonator in 68 AD. Maybe this Spartacus was a namesake, or even another descendant. We've already seen Steve Reeves as the Son of Spartacus, so was Peter Lupus supposed to be playing his Great-Great-Grandson? This was one of four Italian epics churned out by Lupus (alias Rock Stevens) the year before moving on to Impossible Missions, and at times the movie looks like it was made in a big hurry. The action and performances are quite good, and Piccillo's music adds a touch of class, but it's the fascinating plot that grabs the attention. Who would have thought that while Robert Taylor was deposing Peter Ustinov in Rome, over in Thrace young Kirk Douglas was helping General Galba to be the next emperor? Comic book history, of course, but still a lot of fun.

I found the fake Nero plot to be interesting and pretty well worked out. This is "one of these" films which is more about history, which it takes pretty seriously--even if it's alternate history, but it seems to feel obliged to fit into the genre, so you have always shirtless Spartacus--it's impossible to see how this Spartacus could have anything to do with the one we know from history and other films--frequently tearing doors off of hinges or performing non plot related acts of muscle man strength. The love interest aspect (often weak and perhaps part of this genre of films gay following) is weak here and leads to a kind of preposterous Christian sub plot that is barely mentioned but figures into the movie towards the end. In this case the girl is a weak actress who is pretty but not very sexy and our lead muscle man has no chemistry with her.

Lupus, our hero, looks shiny and has impressive man boobs, but he seems to just stand around with the same expression and aside from his chest doesn't seem all that perfect and physical specimen. Supporting cast of various conspiring or heroic Roman's come off best in the acting department.

Widescreen composition and directing are OK at, there is one interesting scene using a statue of a woman and our real female lead in contrast to each other that is interestingly staged.

Also there are pretty obvious "big" shots of lots of extras and fighting taken from some other film. When you have the big battle at the end this is especially obvious and distracting. Also very weak is the final fight between our hero and the fake Nero. The two actors are certainly up for it but it's badly staged with an especially poor ending.

So there you go, if you can forgive the weakness of the execution of the last 30 minutes it's an above average historical (rather than mythically) based Peplum. I'd enjoyed most of it, but when the ending is weak it sours you on the whole thing.

The peplum genre has always been one of the most erratic branches of the "Euro-Cult" style; for every gem, there's a score of average efforts and even a handful of turkeys – and this is clearly one of the latter species!

The narrative throws in historical figures – the hero is called Spartacus and the villain Nero (albeit an imposter who makes the Emperor seem mentally-challenged as opposed to mad!) – who, historically, never actually 'got together', so to speak; they just make easy identification points for the audience, I guess! The muscular lead is one Rock Stevens(!) – whom I'd recently watched in MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964): the stage name itself suits that empty-headed ambiance somewhat better but his performance comes across as wooden under any circumstances; for what it's worth, this was Stevens' fourth and final outing of the sword-and-sandal variety.

The heroine is as bland as her male counterpart – irritatingly, she has a tendency to shriek when wishing to attract Spartacus' attention (incidentally, she's made up to be a femme fatale for much of the duration but, characteristically, it's such a clumsily-handled twist as to utterly lack conviction and, ultimately, merely serves to notch another fiasco in the film). The villain, then, is played by a regular in this type of low-brow fare – Massimo Serato – who's visibly bored throughout; as for Livio Lorenzon, his imposing bald-headed acolyte, he was much more in his element in the Spaghetti Western Texas, ADIOS (1966) which, coincidentally, followed this viewing. What's worse, for being Roman nobility, both Serato and the 'Nero' impersonator are bafflingly made to lust all through the film for some hidden treasure belonging to Spartacus' people!!

Amusingly, the film unwittingly makes a perceptive statement about the whole 'muscle-man epic' fad in which the heroes more readily display brawn than brain throughout – because, at one point here, after explaining the situation to Spartacus, the heroine instinctively asks him "Are you sure you understood?"; similarly, as if the audience were expected to be asking itself just what form of challenge did the gladiator hero put forth to the Empire, the elders of his community are made to blatantly state the fact when Spartacus accepts to face Nero in a duel inside the proverbial arena!