Thursday, September 14, 2017

By the Gods!

Livio Lorenzon and Renato Rossini (aka Howard Ross) enact a scene from their touring theatre troupe in THE SPARTAN GLADIATORS (1964)

This is not the only film in which the main characters work for a touring theatrical troupe. Tina Louise's character was part of a traveling show in SIEGE OF SYRACUSE (1960). I like this film, mainly for this fun aspect, even though I believe its main star, Tony Russel, wasn't cut out for the PEPLUM genre. But the supporting cast is one of the best ever assembled, including Lorenzon and Rossini, familiar faces of the genre. It's a who's who of PEPLUM stars, which for me is like Christmas. This film also suffers from the curse of multiple titles : it's known under many different titles. I always refer to it as THE SPARTAN GLADIATORS.

1 comment:

Scott Ochiltree said...

Thanks for the interesting photo.

Livio Lorenzon always did a really first class job.

He seems a bit dark skinned in the photo. Is he wearing black face makeup? Nowadays that would be super non-PC.

Olivier, for example, would not be allowed to perform Othello these days.