THE BAMBOO SAUCER (1968)

During the test flight of a new plane, pilot Fred Norwood believes he's being chased by a blue light which he assumes is a UFO and goes through some dangerous maneuvers to escape, though because radar on the ground picks up nothing, his bosses think he cracked up and take him off the tests. Fred theorizes that the UFO is able to block radar and his brother-in-law Joe has a similar encounter but winds up dead in a crash. Hank Peters of the National Intelligence Agency hears about his claims and gets in touch with him about an odd incident in which a UFO seems to have crashed in a mountainous area of China (or Red China as everyone insisted on calling it during the Cold War days) and dead humanoid aliens were retrieved. Hank and Fred lead a small team which parachutes into China to investigate, and Sam, an anti-Communist local, takes them to the downed craft, kept inside a ruined church. Trying to avoid Communist troops in the area, they run into a rival group of researchers from Soviet Russia, led by Zagorsky and Anna. After some tension, the groups decided to cooperate. Anna and Fred grow close, though the jealous Zagorsky insists on a non-fraternization policy. They figure out how to enter the craft (an electric razor just happens to generate just the right frequency to do it) and one of the Russians sneaks into it later to attempt a flight but dies in the ship. Just as tensions between the groups begin to escalate, the Red Chinese Army attacks. There are many casualties, but Fred, Anna, and the American Jack Garson get the craft off the ground. When they try to steer it, they realize it's on a preplanned course toward Saturn. Will our survivors manage to change the flight plan to head back to Earth?

This will not be everyone's cup of tea, partly due to its odd mix of genres. It is presented as science fiction but for much of its running time, it's more like a spy film. Political reconciliation propaganda is also present. There is a spaceship but the dead aliens were cremated so we never see them. There are some special effects and sci-fi sets, but they are dirt cheap. Most critics mock them, but once I got used to them, I didn't mind. The physical production has been derided as being just one step up from Plan 9 from Outer Space, but it's better than that. The acting is also pretty good. Handsome John Ericson (top right) is not especially expressive as Fred, but if you read him as stoic, he's fine. Lois Nettleton is good as Anna. Dan Duryea, as Hank, is a bit low energy, but this was his last film; he died of cancer in June of 1968 around the time of the film's release—it seems to have had a scattering of bookings early in 1968 and a larger release later. I was pleased to see Vincent Beck as Zagorsky—he's infamous as the comically villainous Voldar in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. James Hong, who in his 90s is still with us and making movies (Everything Everywhere All at Once), is Sam. You'll also see a couple of familiar TV faces: Bob Hastings from McHale's Navy and Bernard Fox who was Dr. Bombay on Bewitched. The story echoes some plot points from the 1950 film THE FLYING SAUCER. With B-movie expectations and a somewhat quirky plot, I enjoyed this, and the vanilla good looks of Ericson don't hurt. At left are Ericson and Nettleton. [Blu-ray]

THE THOUSAND EYES OF DR. MABUSE (1960)

aka THE 1000 EYES OF DR. MABUSE

The powerful German crime lord Mabuse is supposed to have died years ago, but when police chief Kras gets a phone call from a mysterious blind psychic named Cornelius about crimes that fit Mabuse's methods, Kras wonders if Mabuse, or his otherworldly influence, is still around. Cornelius' vision of a man shot on the streets in broad daylight comes true when a journalist is killed with a steel needle shot from a gun into his head. The reporter was staying at the Hotel Luxor, as is American industrialist Henry Travers who is in Berlin to finalize a deal involving the construction of new atomic rockets. Several of the Mabuse-like crimes have involved the hotel, so the police stake the place out. Travers saves Marion Menil from a suicidal jump; she has an abusive club-footed husband and she and Travers (who, unknown to Marion, can see into her room via a secret two-way mirror) hit it off. We also meet Marion's psychiatrist, Dr. Jordan, and a jolly insurance agent, Hieronymous B. Mistelzweig. As these characters interact, we find that almost no one is what they present themselves to be. And though Mabuse is indeed dead, one of these characters has been carrying on in the evil doctor's place. He has rigged all the rooms in the hotel with surveillance cameras and is plotting to get ahold of Travers' rockets in order to lead a new world order. Spying, disguises, murder, and a possibly unsavory romance lead to an exciting climactic sequence which may or may not put an end to Mabuse’s crimes.

Dr. Mabuse was a character from two earlier Fritz Lang films (DR. MABUSE, THE GAMBLER  & THE TESTAMENT OF DR. MABUSE) and he came to be seen in pop culture as a mystical quasi-Hitler figure warning about Germany’s Nazi future. In this sequel (or reboot), several years after the war, vague Nazi ties remain—the hotel was built by the Nazis in 1944, and Mabuse's maniacal desire for power remains alive. Another link to the earlier films is the theme of watching and being watched (be suspicious of the man who claims to be blind). This is the last film that Fritz Lang made, and approaching this as a Mabuse film, I was a little disappointed. Its style is much closer to the krimi movies of the era (German crime movies that are often seen as kin to film noir) than to Lang's own expressionist style, and seen as a krimi, the movie works much better—though tribute is paid to the supernatural elements of the earlier films in a brief seance scene. The romance between Travers (Peter van Eyck) and Marion (Dawn Addams) never really takes off, and the two actors are overshadowed by the supporting cast. Gert Frobe, best known as the Bond villain Goldfinger a few years later, is appealing as the verging-on-bumbling police chief. Wolfgang Preiss is quite effective as the creepy psychic, Howard Vernon is a cold-blooded killer in service to the Mabuse figure, and Werner Peters is fun as Mistelzweig (what a great character name!). The movie drags a bit, sometimes feeling like a condensed serial (a Lang trait) but the last fifteen minutes pick up nicely. There were sequels to this in which Lang didn't participate, which I’ll be reviewing soon. If you want to avoid spoilers, don't look at the cast list on IMDb. I wasn't crazy about the English dub so see a subtitled German print if you can. Pictured top right is Preiss; at left, Frobe and Preiss. [Blu-ray]

ANGEL IN EXILE (1948)

Charlie Dakin is released from prison after serving five years for a gold dust heist he was part of. His buddy Ernie, who has hidden the gold, picks him up, and the two are followed by Giorgio and Spitz, two other heist men who want to claim their part of the treasure. In the Arizona mountains, near the village of San Gabriel, Charlie files a land claim for an abandoned gold mine where the stash is hidden. The plan is to pretend to find the gold dust and sell it to the government, but the land clerk, Higgins, figures out their plan, wants to be cut in, and advises them to slowly "mine" the gold over several months to make the mining seem legitimate, and offers to handle their claims so no one gets suspicious. Eventually, Giorgio and Spitz muscle in as well. Meanwhile, Charlie establishes relationships with the villagers, some of whom he hires as workers. The village is in bad shape and needs a new health clinic and a new water source. There are rumors of a 300-year-old ghostly angel named the Blue Lady who can work miracles, and when Charlie's mine starts producing gold, the villagers think it's the work of the angel. Charlie grows especially close to Dr. Chavez and his daughter Raquel, who begins to fall for Charlie. When a typhus outbreak threatens the village, Charlie accompanies the doctor on calls and tells stories of the Blue Lady performing miracles; these stories offer the patients hope and help them get better faster, leading to Charlie being seen as something of an angel himself. Soon Charlie wants to give the ill-gotten gold dust money to the village, but, of course, his cohorts don't agree.

In addition to the word "angel" in the title, we are told at the beginning that this is "the story of a miracle," so we're prepped for a supernatural agency that never materializes. Still, this B-movie does work up a nice gentle folktale feel despite its gunplay climax. Some viewers make a claim for this as a film noir, and I guess in the sense that the hero is actually something of an anti-hero—he's not evil but he is a criminal and at the end, he still, thanks to the Production Code, has to pay for his actions. Otherwise, the tone and look of the movie aren't particularly noirish. I've noticed that John Carroll (Charlie, pictured) is not an admired actor among many classic movie fans (at least the ones who write blogs), maybe because he was pushed early in his career as a Clark Gable type, maybe because he doesn't have a wide range, but he's one of my favorite B-leads and he's fine here, though he was aging out of the hearty young buck image he had earlier in the decade. Thomas Gomez (the doctor), Baton MacLane (Giorgio), and Adele Mara (Raquel) are all fine. Howland Chamberlain, a new name to me, does a nice job as the passive but slimy nerd Higgins. The finale, with good use of guns and fists, is satisfying. A must for John Carroll fans, if there are any others out there. [YouTube]

THE ALPHA INCIDENT (1978)

A strange substance has been brought to Earth from a Mars probe. Doctors Farrell and Rogers study it, noting in conversation that scientists already know a bit about its potentially dangerous properties and that it's akin to a virus. We see them inject hamsters and rats with the substance. The next day, the animals are found dead, their brains having exploded, leaving the scientists to assume that sleep is what triggers the virus to become active. Meanwhile, the rest of the substance is being shipped by train to an underground storage facility in Colorado, accompanied by government man Sorenson. On the train, Sorenson is pestered by Hank, a nosy bearded redneck employee who can't stop yakking and wants desperately to know what's so secret and important about the vials they're carrying. When Sorenson falls asleep, Hank steals his keys, unlocks the container and accidentally breaks one of the vials, cutting his hand on the glass and, as we know but he doesn't, probably getting infected. In the morning, the train stops at a small station in Moose Point, and when Sorenson realizes what's happened, and that Hank has possibly infected everyone in the station office, they are put under official quarantine, unable to leave until they get more information from the scientists. We spend the rest of the movie with the quarantined folks: Sorenson, secretive while trying to be the patriarchal voice of reason; Hank, who remains a gabby pain in the ass; Charlie, the slow-talking older boss of the station; Jenny, the chirpy young secretary; and Jack, a train mechanic who hates authority figures. The rest of the movie takes place in the office as tensions rise and fall. Jenny claims to have a date with a guy named Ted, but the slimy Jack senses she's lying and soon seduces her. Jack also tries to escape but Sorenson shoots him in the arm to stop him. Some National Guardsmen are called out with orders to shoot to kill if anyone gets away, and Hank, the only one of the group known to actually be infected, runs off into the woods, is wounded by Sorenson, and will presumably die from the infection or be shot down—we never find out his fate. Amphetamines are dropped off to help them stay awake, but eventually, poor shambling Charlie falls asleep; sure enough, his brain explodes and one of his eyes pops out (a good effect for a low-budget production). In the morning, antidote pills are dropped off, but … I’ll save spoilers for the next paragraph.

This low-budget local Wisconsin production from cult director Bill Rebane has a reputation as being an Ed Wood-level movie, but though the production values are threadbare (there are basically two sets: the train station office and the scientists' lab) and the middle of the film is slow and too talky, I found some pleasures here. I like Ralph Meeker (Charlie), the only star name present, but he's stuck playing a passive old guy with no personality and is given almost nothing to do, until his brain explodes, by which time Charlie is not Meeker but a special effects dummy. George 'Buck' Flower, something of a minor cult figure, is scuzzily effective as the obnoxious Hank. I appreciate the actors who play the scientists (Paul Bentzen and John Alderman, pictured top left) for trying their best to sound puzzled and concerned. My discovery here is Stafford Morgan (at right), a handsome character actor whose face will be familiar from dozens of TV and movie roles. He almost succeeds at creating a character out of Sorenson. Morgan is very good at being the authority figure who may or may be trustworthy. He never loses his temper despite the asshole behavior of Hank and Jack. If I had been stuck in that office, I would have totally trusted him, and maybe even flirted a bit. [Spoiler:] The film is sometimes criticized for its downbeat ending, stolen from Night of the Living Dead, but it was the paranoid 70s and, though the movie doesn't prepare us well for the finale, it's effective, partly due to Morgan's acting. This is almost by accident a decent Z-grade sci-fi thriller. It would be even better if cut down by fifteen minutes or so. [YouTube]

LADIES’ PARADISE (1930)

This late-period French silent film begins with a rather didactic title card telling us that the economic battle of the small shop versus the giant store will always be problematic, and you can only blame progress. The orphan Denise arrives in Paris to stay with her uncle Baudu who runs a small textile shop which is in danger of being put out of business by the block-long department store across the street, Au Bonheur des Dames (Ladies' Paradise). In fact, the first thing that Denise sees in Paris is a plane dropping leaflets onto the streets advertising the store where you can get "everything you desire." Baudu takes her in but cannot give her a job as he can barely take care of his daughter Genevieve and her fiancé Colomban, so she heads across to the Bonheur where, thanks to a fortuitous meeting with Mouret, the store's owner (though she doesn't know that), she is hired as a fashion model. Mouret takes a liking to her, despite the fact that he is anxiously waiting for her uncle's shop to fail so he can demolish that entire side of the street to expand his store. With financial help from the wealthy Madame Desforges, he wants to build the biggest store in the world, a "temple of elegance, luxury and beauty." Mouret and Denise develop a casual friendship and he comes to her rescue when she is assaulted by a male worker in the enormous lunch room, and she eventually learns who he is at a company picnic. Meanwhile, she makes an enemy of Clara, a co-worker whose flirtatious glances across the street at Colomban turn into a real threat to his relationship with Genevieve, who has become quite sickly, basically living in her bedroom. Demolition begins with the sad sight of Baudu's mostly empty store still standing. In the end [Spoiler!] Baudu is driven out of business, goes on a shooting spree in the store, and dies when he is hit by a Bonheur truck (whether he is pushed, falls or deliberately jumps is unclear) and dies. The odd ending, which is taken directly from the Emile Zola novel the film is based on, has Mouret decide he went too far in his desire for progress until Denise tells him that progress itself is to blame, but that progress isn't all bad after all, and the expanded store opens as they make plans to become an official couple. Quite a whiplash ending.

Directed by Julien Duvivier, who went on to direct some seventy movies in France (Pepe Le Moko) and Hollywood (The Great Waltz, the Vivien Leigh Anna Karenina), this is a marvel of visual style, with a nearly constantly moving camera, some incredible crowd scenes—including the shooting spree—and impressive sets with the spectacular store interiors shot in a real department store where most of the crowd scenes take place. Getting lost in the style is a way to draw attention away from the weak central performance of Dita Parlo as Denise who overacts, largely with her eyes, especially in close-ups. In fact, the only strong performance comes from Pierre de Guingand as Mouret who is the only actor to really overcome the curse of silent movie overacting. Also good are Fabien Haziza as Colomban and Ginette Maddie as Clara, perhaps because their characters are well differentiated from the others, mostly store workers, who blend together. The modern score by Gabriel Thibaudeau is good, except for the occasional vocal aria worked in awkwardly. The Criterion Channel aired this as an example of a forerunner of the French movement of poetic realism, and while the visual style is indeed effective, I'm not sure the “poetic” is quite the right word for its impact. Pictured at top left are Parlo and de Guingand. At right is a shot of the impressive interior of the store. Original French title: Au bonheur des dames. [Criterion Channel]

THE FLAME BARRIER (1958)

A new satellite, the X-117, is launched with a chimp on board but is lost 200 miles up, somewhere around the "flame barrier" where the Earth's atmosphere ends. The satellite is presumed to have disintegrated but actually it falls to Earth in a Mexican jungle. Scientist Howard Dahlmann takes off to find the wreckage but isn't heard from for months and his wife Carol heads down to hire a search party led by the reliable Dave Hollister and his cocky ne'er-do-well brother Matt. It's the rainy season and Dave is reluctant to go, but Carol offers them $7000 if they find Howard alive or 10% of his estate if he's proven dead. Villagers warn them that animals in the area are dying. They find a skeleton that Carol thinks is Matt but it's actually a native who was mysteriously burned up. Soon some of the team members have left and tensions grow between the brothers, in part because Matt is putting the moves on Carol, though Carol seems more attracted to Dave. Another native is found with chest burns; he eventually dies and his flesh melts off leaving just his skeleton. Finally they find the satellite in a cave, with Howard's body engulfed in a glowing pulsing blob. An invisible forcefield extends from the satellite which sets fire to anything it comes in contact with, and it's doubling in size every two hours. If the search party leaves, that means they'll be leaving the nearby villagers, and eventually the entire world, at the mercy of the force. But can they quickly find a way to fight and destroy it?

The bulk of this B-movie is of the jungle adventure genre with sci-fi elements thrown in at the beginning and end. If you plan to watch this as a sci-fi film, you'll be disappointed. It's fairly short, 70 minutes, and the jungle melodrama, complete with dangerous animals and sweaty trekking, tends to drag in the middle. But the climactic scenes are tense and effective. Some critics assume that this was originally intended to be all jungle story but the Russian launch of Sputnik, which occurred just a couple of months before filming began, may have influenced its turn toward satellite sci-fi. It's no gem but I enjoyed the mash-up of genres. Kathleen Crowley holds her own as the strong lead female, though she does come off as a little whiny in her single-minded focus on her mission, ignoring the bad outcomes for everyone else that seem likely. Arthur Franz is serviceable as Dave, the good brother, though he's awfully bland compared to the handsome Robert Brown as Matt, the less-good brother—he's not really bad, just a problem drinker who tends to be full of himself and redeems himself in the end. Brown went on to minor fame as a regular on the late 60s TV show Here Come the Brides. If the unusual combo of genres sounds appealing to you, you'll like this one OK. Pictured are Franz, Crowley and Brown. [YouTube]

CASTLE IN THE DESERT (1942)

Reclusive millionaire Paul Manderley lives in a secluded castle in the middle of a California desert with his wife Lucy. He wears a scarf across half his face due to a facial scar and the couple lives off the grid, so to speak, with no electricity and no telephone. They are currently entertaining a small group consisting of Walter (Paul’s lawyer), his wife Brenda, a German doctor named Retling, and the visiting Professor Gleason. When Gleason dies after drinking a doctored cocktail, Lucy freaks out—she is a descendent of the notorious Borgia family and her late stepbrother was suspected of murder by poison. Gleason's body is taken to a nearby hotel to be found. In San Francisco, detective Charlie Chan gets a letter from Lucy asking for his help, so he heads out to the castle only to discover that Lucy denies sending the letter. Soon it's like Grand Central Station at the castle. Showing up eventually are Chan's son Jimmy, the mysterious local fortune teller Madame Saturnia, a sculptor friend of the family, a history professor of Chan's acquaintance, and a private investigator. There is another poisoning and Dr. Retling thinks that Lucy is responsible and should be committed to an asylum. Meanwhile, we discover that not everyone is who they seem and there are possibly two separate conspiracies going on. Never fear, however, as Chan soon gets to the bottom of the mysteries.

This was the last Chan movie that Twentieth Century Fox made, the last one that had a decent budget and the resources of a major studio. It is quite enjoyable, and one reason is the fabulous castle interior, apparently left over from Fox's filming of The Hound of the Baskervilles. It looks good and is shot well with some inventive camera angles here and there, and the matte painting of the castle's exterior is effective. Sidney Toler (Chan) was still in good shape and Victor Sen Yung is in his element as the modern American son who winds up comically trapped in a suit of armor. The strong supporting cast, several of whom appeared in other Chan movies, includes Douglass Dumbrille as Paul, Edmund MacDonald as Walter, Ethel Griffes as Madame Saturnia who provides some mild comic relief (and is referred to as a “queer number” by a townsperson), Steven Geray as the doctor, and Richard Derr as the history professor. It's a particularly tricky mystery with fun twists, and it's paced quickly enough to be over in an hour. I liked Chan's quip about his son: "Glamour boy who jump to conclusion sometimes gets hair mussed." Though not based directly on any Chan novel, the setting seems inspired by Earl Derr Biggers’ second Chan book The Chinese Parrot. I don't know that I can name one Charlie Chan movie as my favorite, but this is certainly near the top. [DVD]

OLD SHATTERHAND (1964)

In the American Old West, a frontier couple is killed by bow and arrow and two Comanche Indians are left dead at the scene, making it look like Apaches were responsible. But the attackers are white men on a mission: to undercut the ranchers' trust in the Apaches and to stop a treaty with the Apaches from being signed in Washington. They don't realize yet that the couple's young son escaped and can serve as a witness against them. The bad guys are led by Bradley and Dixon; the good guys are a German man named Old Shatterhand (though he's not that old), his Apache blood brother Winnetou, Winnetou's adopted son Tujunga, and an actual old guy named Sam Hawkens. There are casualties (surprisingly, the boy is killed during a shooting match by one of the villains) and the two hour running time is too much, but there is an effective climax at a fort, and the promise of more adventures with Old Shatterhand and Winnetou. The two main characters are creations of the German author Karl May (1842-1912), with Winnetou actually being the primary character in his books. The stories were very popular in Europe but weren't translated into English until the 1970s. Based on the evidence of this movie, these are fairly traditional western stories of ranchers and land grabbers, with an emphasis on friendly relations between the white men and the Indian tribes. Over a dozen movies based on May characters were made in Germany in the 1960s and were very popular. The American actor Lex Barker played Old Shatterhand in seven movies (this was the third one released), and another popular May creation, Kara Ben Nemsi, in other films. Some viewers call this a Eurowestern, akin to a spaghetti Western but filmed in Germany rather than Italy, though in style, it's much closer to the traditional Hollywood Western epics of the late 50s and 60s—and the theme song practically plagiarizes the theme of The Magnificent Seven. Barker is fine, but he's certainly no Clint Eastwood, though he is a bit of a loner. French actor Pierre Brice played Winnetou and he's acceptably stoic and respectable. Israeli actress Daliah Lavi is Paloma (aka White Dove), a part-white part-Apache woman who lives near some impressive waterfalls; she's nice eye candy but doesn't play a large role in the plot, and no real romantic tension is generated between her and Barker. Two handsome actors, Guy Madison and Rik Battaglia, are the chief bad guys. Old Sam Hawkens is played by Ralf Wolter whom I know as the porn writer in the movie Cabaret. The Yugoslavia backgrounds fill in nicely for Arizona or California. I bought a Blu-ray set of seven Karl May movies so I'll probably write a few more up in the future. Western fans should like this, but don't expect anything very different or exotic. [Blu-ray]

THE STRANGLER (1964)

The opening shot is a close-up of an eye in which is reflected a woman in her underwear. The eye we're looking at is that of Leo Kroll, a sweaty overweight young man who has snuck into the woman's apartment and proceeds to strangle her with her own stockings. He closes her eyes and pulls a small doll out of his coat which he leaves. In the next shot, he's at home where he fondles and undresses another doll, and puts it in a drawer with seven other dolls. Indeed, this is the eighth in a series of murders that have baffled the police. Kroll, a medical lab technician, has mother issues: his mom, crippled and confined to the hospital where he works, is an oppressive terror, berating Leo mercilessly especially about his friendless and celibate state: "Even as a little boy, nobody liked you!"; "You're fat!"; "You don't make enough money to keep a good-looking hussy in stockings!" His latest victim worked as a nurse at his hospital, and he scopes out his next victim, Clara, working as his mother's nurse; the two had grown close which Leo seems to resent, and Leo kills her. On the one hand, this has an unexpected benefit: the new nurse warns Leo not to mention Clara's death to his mom on the chance that the shocking news might give her a fatal heart attack. Leo immediately goes into his mom's room, tells her about Clara, and indeed mom drops dead. On the other hand, the death of two nurses from the same hospital causes Leo to come under suspicion. Leo gets his dolls at a ring toss game at a nearby arcade where he chats with the two female workers and gets a crush on one of them, Tally. He makes the mistake of killing the other arcade worker not long after an undercover cop noticed him there (figuring that the dolls left at the scenes of the crimes came from that game), and the net tightens on Leo. The clueless Leo asks Tally to run away with him, and her rejection sends him off the deep end.

This creepy little psychological thriller was based loosely on the real-life Boston Strangler who, at the time of the film's release, was still at large. Victor Buono, who plays Leo, is the main reason to see this. He gives an uncomfortably real performance, assisted by many close-ups of his rotund, sweaty face. He frequently blinks and smirks and makes halting movements. Both Buono and Ellen Corby, who plays his mother, dare to evoke almost no sympathy for their characters. We see how Corby has fucked up her son and we despise her for it—I was almost cheering for her to die in her heart attack scene—but I felt no real sympathy for Buono, just a grudging sadness for how he turned out. The murder scenes are relatively graphic though not gratuitously so, and the whole thing has a grimy, unpleasant feel to it, helped by the black & white and low budget look of the film, undercut occasionally by odd bits of humor among the cops, mainly David McLean as the boss and Michael Ryan as his assistant. Davey Davison as Tally is the standout among the women, giving a fairly subtle performance. Diane Sayer is also good as her ill-fated co-worker. Some may feel this verges on sheer exploitation, but I think it's a bit better than that, though not a must-see except for fans of Buono. Pictured is Victor Buono at top right and Michael Ryan at left. [TCM]

SINS OF ROME (1953)

aka SPARTACO

Thrace in 74 B.C. has been conquered by Rome. A councilman tries to stop Roman soldiers from desecrating the Acropolis and is killed. His daughter Amitys argues with Marcus Rufo and fellow Thracian Spartacus steps in and slaps Rufo. Both Amitys and Spartacus are arrested and made slaves, though seeing his potential during a street fight, Crassus sends Spartacus to gladiator school. Amitys is assigned to Crassus' daughter Sabina. As Amitys engages in what looks like an interpretive dance in the arena, lions are let loose and Spartacus saves Amitys from them. Crassus offers Spartacus freedom but he won't take it unless all the Thracian slaves are freed. Soon Spartacus has helped Octavius lead a rebellion of the gladiators who win a battle with the Roman army, though Crassus downplays their victory by calling it an "incident." Spartacus is given refuge by Sabina who finds him attractive. This leads to a scene in which Spartacus is ready to sex it up with Sabina, but is reminded that there are bigger things at stake. Crassus offers Spartacus a position as a Roman soldier but he turns it down and instead leads a larger battle which ends with a Roman victory and Amitys present for Spartacus to hand her his sword as he dies, as she says, "The flame you lit is still burning." This is an early Italian peplum version of the same story that Stanley Kubrick brought to the screen a few years later with Kirk Douglas as Spartacus. Though it seems to have had a decent budget, with good sets and a well done climactic battle, it can't help but feel a bit puny next to the 1960 movie, as it's not in widescreen or color, and gets fairly talky. Despite the presence of gladiators and an arena, we are shortchanged in terms of action scenes. In fact, it conforms more to the formula of the later Hercules and Maciste movies than to the historical epic genre. And up against the Hollywood epics of the same era (Quo Vadis, The Robe), it didn't stand a chance in the States and was roundly panned by critics. Massimo Girotti (Spartacus) is handsome and commanding; he played a wide range of roles over his long career, though he did get typecast a bit as an action hero in the peplum era. For me, Gianna Maria Canale (Sabina) outshines Ludmilla Tcherina (Amitys) in the sex appeal department. Interesting for me more as a novelty, not quite swords-and-sandals, not quite an epic. Pictured are Girotti and Canale. [Streaming]