In the early years of the Common Era, Rome is dealing with a barbarian uprising in the remote province of Pannonia. Rome sends centurion Marcus Ventidius to deal with it. The barbarian leader Magdo is inclined to seek peace and blames young upstart Batone, who wants to continue the attacks, for being the reason for Rome's anger. Magdo's daughter Helen is supposed to marry Batone but Magdo has changed his mind, calling Batone bloodthirsty. Marcus visits his lover Julia before heading out to the battlefield with his assistant Publius. After a battle, Magdo and Julia are captured with other women and children and held hostage by Marcus, who finds himself captivated, if you will, by Helen. Julia, jealous, bribes guards to ensure that Magdo and Julia escape. When Marcus finds out what has happened, he turns his back on Julia. The Roman governor Messala orders the destruction of Pannonia leading to a major battle scene, and eventually to a peace which is settled between Helen and Marcus.
Despite the title, this is not a documentary about 70s bands like Poco or Firefall that were overshadowed by the Eagles. Here, Eagle refers to the battle standard of the Romans. This Italian film came late in the prime peplum era and is not loved by Barry Atkinson, author of Heroes Never Die, the authoritative book on peplum cinema. I agree with him to some extent that it feels a little low energy, especially the performance of American actor Cameron Mitchell (pictured) as Marcus. His physical presence seems diminished and he sort of sleepwalks through his part. Being filmed in Yugoslavia in the winter, with snow on the ground and actors' breath in the air, might have contributed to Mitchell's lack of enthusiasm, in addition to Mitchell being close to 50. But overall, the movie is decent, with good sets, adequate performances by others, and a lengthy and nicely done battle scene at the climax. Alex Medar is quite good as the well-meaning Magdo, and Alex Gavin is fine as Batone. There is some disagreement out there about the spelling of character names and even about which actors played what roles, with the usually dependable IMDb giving two different actors the role of Publius. I have gone with what seemed right to me (and it's clearly Dieter Eppler playing Publius, not Remo De Angelis). One of the best scenes involves Batone forcing Marcus to run barefoot three times over flaming coals; the makeup on the feet afterwards is quite effective. Though this is generally regarded as a peplum film, there are no muscles or bare chests present here. I think that the historical peplums (as opposed to the mythical ones) might deserve a separate name of their own—which I guess would be "historical peplums"! [YouTube]
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