A BELL FROM HELL (1973)

Young John is sitting in a room in an asylum making a plaster cast of his own face. Next, John is being released from the asylum (it seems more like a college dorm) on a kind of probation during which he has to report to his doctor every eight days. He lives in his late mother’s old house and frequently visits his Aunt Marta and her three young daughters. We don’t know why John was institutionalized or for how long (he looks to be in his early to mid 20s). In fact, we learn very little else about John's situation except seeing home movies which show that John and his cousins were close in their childhood. His reunion with his family is fraught with tension; it is vaguely implied that his aunt may have had him put away in an attempt to take his inheritance, and it's even more vaguely implied that incestuous feelings may have (and may still) run rampant among the four cousins. John briefly takes a job in a slaughterhouse but leaves after one day, saying he's learned enough—the slaughterhouse footage here is real and explicit. We soon learn that John enjoys pulling pranks. Some are fairly harmless, like the one he pulls on a visitor to the aunt's house that is taken from the famous Saki story “The Open Window.” Some are more harmful, such as when he pretends to rip his eyes out in front of a neighbor's wife; she faints and he puts her body on her couch and leaves a note implying that he raped her. On the other hand, he acts as a rescuer to a young girl who is threatened with gang rape by four hunters. The next day, he pulls a vulgar prank on one of the men involving pissing in a urinal. John is hard to figure out, and when he begins to plan revenge against Marta and his cousins, his actions are even more bizarre. He assaults one of the cousins, though it seems to turn into consensual sex at some point. He sprays Aunt Marta's unconscious face with honey then sets a colony of bees on her. He outfits his basement like a slaughterhouse then ties his three cousins up as if planning to slaughter them. The bees don't kill Marta and he can't go through with the slaughter (or perhaps he never intended to, though that is not made clear) but Marta gets her revenge, with some help from old pal Don Pedro, when John is tied to a new church bell (the title bell, I assume, which we see off and on through the film), bricked in, and left to be hung when the bell is rung for the first time the next morning. But there’s a nifty little final scene which shows Don Pedro paying for his crime.

This Spanish film was directed by Claudio Guerin who fell to his death from the bell tower set on the last day of shooting—despite rumors, it's unlikely to have been a suicide. Though Spanish, the film partakes of some elements of the Italian giallo genre, with interesting use of color, atmospheric cinematography, some potentially gory moments (though oddly, there is only one death shown in the movie and it's bloodless), some near-nudity, and a somewhat incoherent script. One online critic says it took him three viewings to figure everything out. I have no desire to sit through this again (unless I can find a cleaned-up DVD print; the YouTube prints are all smudgy and murky) and I think my plot summary is mostly accurate. French actor Renaud Verley (pictured) is handsome and effective as John. I'm not sure that Verley knew what was going on with his character any more than I did, but he strikes a nicely ambiguous persona and we are sometimes in uncomfortable sympathy with John. The busy and respected Vivica Lindfors gives the wheelchair-bound Marta some gravitas even as we're pretty sure she's a villain. We never really know how conniving and controlling she is; the only truly deplorable thing we see her do is to withhold John's passport so he can't leave the country and start a new life. (In one fairly big plothole, we are told that John never shows up to his probation visits, but he suffers no consequences for this.) The plot is confusing and disjointed, and the tone unpleasant, but if I got the chance to see a clear print, I might watch this again—though three times is out of the question. [YouTube]

TARGET EARTH (1954)

A woman in her scanties wakes up in bed, the noon light coming in through the window, surrounded by scattered sleeping pills. The groggy Nora, who has apparently tried to kill herself, discovers that her apartment building has no power or water, and when she heads outside, finds the streets are oddly empty. She sees a dead body, then runs into a man named Frank who spent the night unconscious after being mugged. The two assume the city was evacuated during the night and they both slept through it. Passing a bar, they find a man and woman doing some piano playing and daydrinking. Jim and Vicki got dead drunk last night, also missing the apparent evacuation. On the streets, they discover that all the cars have their distributor caps missing, a move that would indicate an attempt to stop an invading army (remember the nuns and the distributor caps at the end of The Sound of Music?). The group picks up another straggler, Otis, who finds a newspaper with headlines about an invasion by a mystery army. In the streets, Otis looks up and sees the shadow of what looks like a giant robot. From the rooftops, the robot shoots Otis with a fatal blast of energy, and the others retreat to an empty hotel. At about thirty minutes into this real-time drama, we cut to backstory scenes of the Army preparing to fight off an army of hundreds of aliens from Venus. The military manage to put a robot out of commission and a scientist examines it hoping to discover vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, a trigger-happy thug named Davis shows up at the hotel and the movie cuts between their tense situation and that of the military as they plan to attack the aliens in the city. What will happen when our small group gets caught between the Army and the aliens?

The low-budget science fiction film benefits from the eeriness of the empty city streets; the city is never identified by name but it was shot on Los Angeles locations. It becomes an interesting mix of a severely limited cast caught in melodramatic situations and larger scale scenes of the military. The robots themselves are effective enough considering the budget and the era. We never see an army of them because only one was actually constructed and used over and over, but that limitation is never too obvious. After the first ten minutes or so, the tension dissipates a bit but we remain invested in the characters, thanks partly to OK performances from the cast, primarily Kathleen Crowley (Nora), Richard Denning (Frank), Robert Roark (Davis) and Whit Bissell (the army scientist). I've never been a big fan of Denning, as I find his hero persona lacking, but he's serviceable here. Not bad for an early version of the genre of film in which a small group of strangers try to survive apocalyptic conditions—later came FIVE and THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED and PANIC IN YEAR ZERO among others. [YouTube]

ISLAND OF TERROR (1966)

On Petrie's Island, a small Irish island with no telephones and limited transportation to the mainland, Dr. Philips is doing secret work in a chemical lab to find a cure for cancer by creating living tissue that can fight and kill cancer cells, but as an experiment reaches a climax, there is an explosion. Farmer Ian Bellows hears odd noises coming from a cave and goes to investigate but doesn't return. His body is found by Constable Harris, but it's all soft tissue, with the bones completely sucked out—Harris tells Dr. Landers that Ian's face is "a horrible mush with the eyes just sitting on it" (though when we actually see the body, it's not quite as horrible looking as that description would have it). Landers goes to London and gets pathologist Brian Stanley and brilliant young scientist David West to come to the island to investigate. They assume a disease is to blame, but when they visit Philips' lab, they find Philips and his associate dead and similarly boneless. A farmer's cow is found dead in the same condition, and West deduces that the failed experiment created a new creatures which they call silicates that feed off of calcium phosphate, which is found in bones. After a couple of almost-reveals, we see these creatures: they are large turtle-like beings with a snake-like tentacle that grabs people and starts the process of deboning. They can also split in two, which they do at a rapid rate, possibly able to cover the island in just a few hours. The constable is killed by one, as is Dr. Landers when he tries to dispatch one with an axe (which is unable to penetrate its body). Campbell, the town's leader (maybe the mayor but that’s never made clear), and his assistant Argyle, put themselves at the disposal of West and Stanley, and soon it's figured out that radioactivity is the only thing that can kill the silicates. West and Stanley go back to Philips' lab to get some Strontium 90 (in an unnecessarily long scene showing the two suiting up in protective gear); the men have Campbell gather the islanders at the town hall while a bunch of cattle are injected with the radioactive element, the hope being that the silicates will eat the cattle and then die off. Unfortunately, if this doesn't work, it means the islanders are all potential food for the monsters.

Hammer director Terence Fisher made this film for Planet Film Productions, a short-lived outfit specializing in sci-fi horror. The movie starts off well; the feel of the island is authentic and most of the performances are appropriately low-key. Peter Cushing is his usual reliable self as Stanley and Edward Judd is quirkily handsome and commanding as West. His girlfriend Toni (Carole Gray) tags along though the narrative implies that Toni may have just been a one-night stand; it’s not really important but still a weird plotpoint. The supporting actors are surprisingly good at being innocent folks caught up in the quickly growing and potentially apocalyptic situation. They include Sam Kydd (the constable), Eddie Byrne (Landers), Niall MacGinnis (Campbell) and James Caffrey (Argyle). The creatures are a bit silly looking in the beginning, especially when they are indoors and move about like big Roombas. Outdoors they are fairly effective, and even more so when they drop out of trees or smash through windows, and the climatic scene at the town hall has a nice CRAWLING EYE feel. Overall, though, the whole thing has a bland look and a predictable by-the-numbers approach to narrative. The movie ends with the menacing creatures all wiped out. The usual "Don’t tamper in God’s domain" message is undercut a bit when West notes that "science has its risks but the risks aren't enough to hinder progress," but a last shot of a Japanese lab subverts that by providing a Gotcha! moment. BTW, a later Planet movie, NIGHT OF THE BIG HEAT, is very similar to this in setting and plotpoints, with the same director and with Cushing as a star. In fact, when I started watching this, I thought it was BIG HEAT which I'd already seen so I almost stopped watching. Pictured are Judd, Gray, and Cushing. [Blu-ray]

GORGO (1961)

Joe (Bill Travers) and Sam (William Sylvester), partners in a sea salvage business, are bringing up a lost treasure off the coast of Ireland when the sea starts bubbling. An undersea volcano erupts, damaging the ship and sending them to the shore of Nara Island for repairs. They get a frosty welcome from McCartin, the harbormaster, who has been illegally hoarding treasure and artifacts found nearby, but they hit it off with Sean, the orphan boy who helps McCartin. When a local diver is found dead, it's assumed that a shark got him, but as men hunt the shark, a 65-foot tall bellowing reptilian creature comes out of the sea and attacks. Joe and Sam lead the men in capturing the beast, which Sean calls Ogra after a sea creature artifact of McCartin's. The University of Dublin wants the beast so they can study it, but Joe makes a deal with the Dorkin Circus in London and they transport it there to be put on public display, naming it Gorgo, for Gorgon, the mythic entity that turned men to stone. What could go wrong? Well, the Dublin scientists somehow figure out that Gorgo is just an infant, and soon a mom twice as big as him follows his scent and comes looking for her baby. Watch out, Piccadilly Circus! Look out, Big Ben! What Godzilla did to Tokyo, mom does to London.

People tend to either love this B-monster movie or think of it as a big joke. My own history with this film: it was the first monster movie I saw in a theater, probably in 1963 when I was 7 and already a big Chiller Theater fan, and I was quite impressed with it. The folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000 riffed it on their show, and the print they used was panned and scanned and in bad shape so it seemed to deserve its mocking. But seen in widescreen and in clear and bright color, it's a different experience. Rather than use stop motion animation, the producers went the full Godzilla route and had a man dressed up in a rubber suit in the middle of a bunch of miniature sets, and for the era, it comes off pretty well. Motion speed is adjusted to make the monster's movements seem appropriately scaled. (The title monster, BTW, does not go on a rampage, it's the mom, but she is never given a name.) Matte and blue screen work is fairly good, if awfully obvious at times. The writing is rather weak—it rushes through some things, like the capture of Gorgo, and drags out other things, like the unnecessary amount of military stock footage in the last half which causes the narrative to lose some momentum. But generally, the movie does fairly well what "kiddie" monster movies were expected to do back then. I assume the character of Sean was present so kids would have someone to identify with, and to ultimately make Gorgo sorta cute.

Bill Travers and William Sylvester handle their lead roles seriously, with Sylvester coming off as the nice guy and Travers a bit of a hard ass—though in the end, it's Travers who saves Sean from possible trampling. There isn't even a hint of romance here; as far as I remember, there are no females in speaking parts. So of course, I want to read Travers and Sylvester as a couple, despite the absence of sexual tension, and a few shots near the end of the two with Sean does make them look like a gay-dad family. Certainly they have become his de facto caretakers, and the next step is adoption. Vincent Winter as Sean is good—not too cutesy and not too wooden. The way Sean acts when he first sees Gorgo seems to imply that Sean has seen or at least been aware of the beast's existence, though this does not become a plot thread. I suspect that Sean's relationship with Gorgo inspired Toho to put forth a similar plot point in the later Gamera movies. Busy character actor Martin Benson has a couple of nice moments as the slightly slimy Dorkin, though ultimately I don't think he deserves to be labeled as a bad guy. If your only experience with this movie is through MST3K, you owe it to yourself to see this on home video or streaming. Pictured at top right is Gorgo destroying Big Ben; at left are Winter, Travers, and Sylvester. [Blu-ray]

CAT GIRL (1957)

Leonora has been summoned by her uncle Edmund, whom she has always disliked, to his country estate to discuss her inheritance. She was asked to come alone but brings her husband Richard and two friends, Allan and Cathy. Leonora also reunites with Brian, a psychiatrist whom Leonora knew in the past. Edmond and his housekeeper Anna are not happy to see the others, and more tensions develop: Allan is a drunkard and Richard is fooling around with Cathy. Edmund tells Leonora that she is "inheriting" a family curse: upon her uncle’s death, she will become possessed by a leopard which wanders about the grounds. The specifics of the curse are unclear; there is a leopard which Edmund keeps caged up, and she apparently doesn't so much become a leopard as much as control it, or maybe even inhabit it now and again. The distraught Leonora runs off into the woods as Edmund releases the leopard so it can kill him so Leonora can become the "cat girl" of the title. If you’ve seen the Val Lewton 1942 classic, CAT PEOPLE, you have some idea of the (fairly mild) mayhem that will be unleashed. As in the earlier film, suspense is built up by keeping the matter of the curse ambiguous: is she really a cat girl or is it all in her head? Brian, the psychiatrist, winds up playing an important role, but the writing is weak and things remain mostly muddled by the end, though the conclusion is superficially satisfying, I guess. Barbara Shelley (pictured) is fine in the lead; she became something of a British scream queen in the 60s, not to be confused with the sexier Barbara Steele. The rest of the cast is low energy with no real standouts. The atmosphere is nicely bleak, and there are a couple of visual callbacks to the earlier Lewton movie. Like that film, the studio stepped in here to hype the supernatural explanation a bit over the strictly psychological. Ultimately, fairly ho-hum but watchable. [YouTube]

THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA (1964)

It's October; the first movie in my Chiller Theater month begins with a woman in a nightgown being chased up and down stone stairs through an old theater by a vampire who attacks her with a pitchfork. Then she wakes up from this nightmare. She is Giulia, a member of a dance troupe. The director, Sandro, has moved the troupe into their new home, an abandoned theater, dilapidated and cobwebby. Sandro is warned by Achille, the cantankerous caretaker, that the theater is cursed by the presence of an ancient vampire who was behind the disappearance of actresses in the theater over the years. Suddenly, a group of glow-in-the-dark skeletons pop up out in the audience, but surprise, they're actually the male members of the troupe dressed up to spook Sandro and the girls. No one is terribly concerned with the caretaker's warnings and soon they're rehearsing Sandro's dance version of Cyrano de Bergerac and cleaning up the theater at the same time. Though the building is locked up, a mysterious man shows up, claiming to be a devotee of the theater, but we soon learn that he is actually Stefano, the vampire, and that Achille is his servant. He is attracted to Giulia because she looks like, or perhaps actually is, the reincarnation of the Countess Laura with whom Stefano was carrying on an affair many years ago. Eventually she ordered her servant to bury Stefano alive; he prayed to Satan and somehow cane out of this situation as a vampire. The servant, of course, was Achille who has also become immortal and must serve his master even against his will. As the plot unfolds, not only is Giulia threatened but the entire troupe is. No one can leave the theater because of invisible force fields, and we discover there is a door to another dimension which contains several of Stefano's skimpily clad past vampire brides, chained to a wall. Achille warns the troupe that in order to fend off possible attacks from Stefano, they must keep moving or dancing, which they proceed to do like dervishes. But Giulia, like a character from Dark Shadows, winds up trapped in the torture chamber dimension and may never escape.

Most critics who write about this Italian film directed by Renato Polselli reference his earlier movie The Vampire and the Ballerina which I tracked down after I saw this and which I'll review soon. This film has one setting, the theater, and plays out more or less in real time. Its Gothic feel and theatrical setting do conjure up The Phantom of the Opera, though the occasional humor, the occasional queer touches (a lesbian and at least one fey gay boy), and the modern dancing bring Phantom up to date. The choreography is actually good and quite sexy. Marco Mariani (above left) is very good as Sandro, an enthusiastic Bob Fosse type who leaps around like a dancer even when he's not rehearsing, and he gets as much if not more screen time as Barbara Hawards, playing Giulia. There is a big cast of supporting players, most not developed as characters, and all are good at being enthusiastic and light-hearted for much of the running time. A moment that looks like it will turn into a lesbian love scene becomes a giggly three way kiss. The scene with the men in skeleton leotards is great fun. The plot doesn't need to be attended to too closely, as the primary attractions here are the atmosphere, the vigorous camera work, and the goofy troupe of actors. Stefano's fangs are excellent. A nice discovery, and available in a very good print. A skeleton boy and troupe girl are pictured at right. [Blu-ray]

SURRENDER—HELL! (1959)

Lieutenant Donald Blackburn is stationed in the Philippines at the outbreak of World War II. American forces on Bataan are ordered to surrender, leading to the infamous Bataan Death March during which thousands of American and Filipino prisoners of war died. But Blackburn refuses to surrender, joining several natives as they take to the jungles. A native woman named Delia is especially helpful, tending to Blackburn as he recovers from malaria. He soon falls in with a group of guerillas in high mountain country led by a woman named Pilar, and he more or less adopts an orphan boy named Bruno. After Corregidor in Manila Bay falls to the Japanese, Blackburn conscripts his guerilla fighters into the United States Army, paying them with IOUs that will be honored by the Army after the war. Not all natives are willing to defy the Japanese occupiers by joining up, and eventually Blackburn resorts to signing up a couple of headhunting tribes to fight. Despite some casualties and resistance against them by some locals, the group, which he dubs the 11th Infantry, is successful in fighting the occupiers, most notably by destroying a strategically important bridge. Blackburn and Pilar fall in love, though as they bring to a close their freeing of Northern Luzon, Pilar is captured and eventually dies in Blackburn's arms. In the end, Blackburn's troops are honored by the Army and Blackburn turns over his command to a local officer. This is based on a true story, and Blackburn himself is credited as a technical advisor, but the B-movie budget and behind-the-camera talent are both lacking, and a narrative that has potential ends up rather boring. The handsome Keith Andes (pictured) is fine as Blackburn and he's on screen for almost the entire movie, but there is more telling than showing here; I assume the low budget led to the use of ever-present narration by Andes. There are a couple of action scenes, but mostly narration and conversation carry the movie forward. Susan Cabot (THE WASP WOMAN) as Delia is second billed behind Andes, but vanishes from the film fairly quickly, replaced by Filipino actress Paralumen as Pilar who is fine. It was apparently filmed on location but it mostly looks like sound stages and California locations. Stock footage is used fairly well. Generally, a bland war movie for fans of Keith Andes only. [YouTube]

NEXT TIME I MARRY (1938)

A well-off woman (Lucille Ball) drives slowly past a roadside crew of ditch diggers asking each one if he is married. The first one who says he isn't, though he is very attached to his Great Dane dog Mike, is James Ellison. Ball offers him $500 to marry her immediately, and when he says that's not enough money, she offers a thousand. He says all he needs is $793, so they strike a deal. A justice of the peace marries them; he kisses her, then she slaps him, pays him, and leaves. We find out she’s a heiress about to come into some big money with the stipulation that she's married to a "plain American" man. The problem is that her fiancé (Lee Bowman) is French, so her plan was to marry some poor schmoe to qualify for the money, then head to Reno for a divorce and marry Bowman who, though handsome and charming, is probably a fortune hunter. When the press finds out what's going on, they dub Ellison a Cinderella man which he resents. Ball wants to get to Reno first to file for the divorce, but Ellison traps her in his ride-behind trailer so they will wind up in the city together. At a gas station stop, she ducks out and hitchhikes, but when two men try to assault her, she is saved by Ellison and his dog. Ball and Ellison warm to each other until the press claims he has a wife in Chicago, and Ball discovers a ledger page with the name Caroline, to whom the $793 she paid him will go. Eventually, Bowman catches up with them and Ball travels with him. It turns out that Caroline is the name of a boat that Ellison is making final payments on, and the Chicago wife is not his wife after all. What will happen in Reno? 

This little-known B-movie is one of Lucille Ball's first starring roles after a string of comedic supporting parts at RKO. It's a charming semi-screwball comedy which sort of falls apart in the last fifteen minutes. The screenwriters didn't seem sure what to do once they got to Reno and they threw some creaky plot mechanics in. But enough of the movie works to be a pleasant watch. Ball is very good; it's almost like she's road testing her Lucy Ricardo persona. Ellison, a favorite B-lead of mine, is almost as good as the plain American who falls for Ball but also resents her tricks. Bowman rounds out the main cast quite nicely. With a little tweak of his performance, he could have taken Ellison's role, though the reverse might not work—I'm not sure Ellison could come off as deviously as Bowman does. Director Garson Kanin, better known as a writer (the play Born Yesterday, and some Tracy/Hepburn movies co-written with his wife Ruth Gordon), keeps the pace snappy until the end. In small roles are familiar faces like Mantan Moreland, Dick Elliott, and Cy Kendall. Generally, a nice surprise find. Pictured are Ball and Ellison. [TCM]

MESSALINA VENUS EMPRESS (1960)

Yesterday I reviewed one Italian version of the life of Roman empress Messalina; this version, made nine years later in color and widescreen, is much closer to the peplum genre. The tone is frivolous at times, more liberties are taken with the historical record, and there is more sex and violence. Yet it is the lesser movie of the two. This begins with Valeria Messalina, as a candidate to be a vestal virgin, and Praetorian guard soldier Lucius Maximus meeting cute (or sexy-cute) in the gardens of Vesta. They sex it up in the woods and he leaves for a two year assignment in Armenia. Meanwhile after the murder of Caligula, Caio Silio approaches Messalina to become the wife of the new emperor Claudius as a way to appease the aristocrats who oppose him. A nobleman instrumental to the plot tries to have sex with Messalina on her wedding night, but she kills him. Later, young Marcello is dispatched by her enemies to kill her, but she seduces him, kills him, and has his head sent to the plotters. Years later, Lucius returns and when he sees her, not knowing that she is the empress, she immediately strips for him and they have sex (again). He's a bit disoriented later when he is introduced to her as Messalina. Her reputation among the people is high, but he finds out that she is behind a plot to evacuate a group of poor people (and, it develops, mostly Christians) and is torn between his conscience and his lustful urges. Believe it or not, his conscience eventually wins. This certainly has its moments, including a free-for-all bar fight (marred by some phony looking fisticuffs), some sexy dancing, and a finale capped by an impressive shot of a slaughter scene. I'm assuming that most of the characters are fictional; aside from Messalina and Claudius, the only other character from the earlier film is the gay Narcissus. Here, our hero gets a happy ending, riding off into the sunset with his Christian teenage groupie Sylvia. British actress Belinda Lee is good as Messalina—sadly, she was killed in a car accident just a year later. Spiros Focas (Lucius) is fine. Ida Galli makes for a perky Sylvia (she'd be at home in a 60s beach movie) and Giuliano Gemma (pictured) is a handsome twinkish Marcello. The print I saw was in fine shape visually but had poor subtitles, no better than those you'd find on YouTube. It didn't get a theatrical release in the States but was shown on television in the 1960s as Messalina. I may have had my fill of Messalina movies, though there are others, including one that pits her against a son of Hercules which I may have to dig up. [Amazon Prime]

THE AFFAIRS OF MESSALINA (1951)

Rome, 44 A.D. The emperor Claudius is upset at the spendthrift ways of his wife, the empress Messalina. In theory, she is in charge of overseeing public morals, but Claudius doesn't know that, in addition to taking lovers behind his back—her current primary lover is Caius Silvius—she disguises herself at night as a prostitute named Licisca, collects gossip and takes more lovers. Rebel leader Valerius, who knows about her subterfuge, berates her, calling her "the dishonor of Rome." Eventually Claudius feels he has no choice but to sentence Valerius to death, allowing him to commit suicide. Caius struggles between the attractions of Messalina and the pull of the revolutionaries, as Valerius names Caius his successor, and when Messalina tries to bed him while the funeral pyre of Valerius burns, he rebuffs her. Other characters abound, and a scorecard would be helpful to keep track of their loyalties. Mnester, a court advisor; Lucius, Mnester's handsome adopted son who can imitate a finch—I assumed he was Mnester's catamite though we later see him using his finch call as a signal to have sex with Messalina; Narcissus, a rather fey member of the court; Cinzia, a dancing girl who is in danger of being put to death when she fumbles some dance moves during a court dinner (during which it looks like an orgy will break out any minute); Timius, the brave young protector of Cinzia.

At a party/orgy, the oracular witch Ismene, in league with the rebels, foretells the death of Claudius, or as she words it, the husband of Messalina. Claudius is talked into divorcing Messalina and letting her marry Caius so he will be the doomed man, but this is the plan of those who seek Messalina's downfall. Unfortunately, Octavius, one of the senior rebels, thinks that Caius will go through with the marriage and become emperor, betraying the late Valerius. Things head toward a climax during a day of gladiator games when Cinzia (apparently a secret Christian) is magically able to save Timus from being eaten by lions. Later, Timius is spared from being killed by lead gladiator Taurus (apparently a secret rebel). With Claudius having left Rome to oversee a huge delivery of needed wheat at Ostia, Messalina is at the mercy of various men who wish to see her powerless or dead.

At the time it was made, this was the most expensive Italian film ever, and though it's in black & white and is not widescreen, the production is impressive with elaborate sets, great costumes, and good performances. It's sometimes referred to as an early example of the peplum film, but it doesn't feel or look like one. There are swords and sandals but virtually no sweaty bare-chested muscle men, and the script is strong with several plot details threaded together in a literate way. Most of the character names are drawn from history; I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the events but they do follow broadly the same arc presented on Messalina’s Wikipedia page. The two leads, Mexican actress Maria Felix (Messalina) and French actor George Marchal (Caius) are very good; equally impressive are Jean Chevrier (Valerius), Erno Crisa (Timius), Delia Scala (Cinzia), and Memo Benassi (Claudius). Several crowd scenes, especially at the games, are pulled off well. The print I saw had AI generated English subtitles and they certainly seemed complete and accurate. A good example of, if not a peplum, an early historical epic. Pictured at top right are Scala and Crisa; above left, Chevrier. [YouTube]