REVOLT OF THE BARBARIANS (1964)

In 300 A.D., northern areas of Rome are besieged by, well, revolting barbarians. Darius and his men of the 10th legion are on their way home to Rome after months of battle when they are stopped by Claudius, an emissary of the emperor, and given a new task: head to Gaul and stop the systematic robbery of gold, intended for the soldiers' payroll, by the raiding barbarians. The legion heads to the town of Trivero where Darius and his buddy Marcus disguise themselves as merchants. They get to know Demetrius, head of the city; Livia, who is anti-Rome because Romans were responsible for the death of her father; her aunt Augusta, a woman of indeterminate loyalty; Brutus, the head of the Praetorian Guard. There is more going on here than we see on the surface: it appears that the gold pieces (which are marked with a distinctive 'X') are being stolen by barbarians who are being controlled by Demetrius, and Darius sees the coins turning up in Trivero. Claudius orders Darius and his men to stage a fake gold delivery as bait for catching the bandits. It turns out there is a conspiracy apparently headed by Brutus, but Darius suspects that he has higher-ups controlling him, as a series of double-crosses confirms.

This is not uninteresting, but if you're new to the peplum genre, this may not be the one to start with. The presence of oiled-up musclemen and people in togas are two of the primary criteria for the genre; here, you will find togas but no muscles, or even bare male chests, muscular or otherwise. Roland Carey, as Darius (pictured), is an OK hero that we can root for, and he's handy with a sword, but he is strictly of average build, as is Marcus (Gabriele Antonini). The women are attractive but not as buxom as one might expect. Once you get past the physical glitches, the rest is entertaining enough. The plot is a tiny bit more complicated than usual, and the sword fights are pulled off well, if a bit padded out at times. The soundtrack, as with most Italian movies of the era, is completely dubbed, not only in English speech but with background noises done by foley artists as well, but here the foley department went a bit overboard, with, for example, the sound of two men running sounding like horses clomping. When horses actually are clomping, the sound is overwhelming. There is a musical theme used in some of the fight scenes that is reminiscent of the Rumble music from West Side Story. Ultimately, the title has little meaning, as any barbarian revolt is secondary to the actual intrigue. [YouTube]