The Last Days of Pompeii [Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei] *** (1959, Steve Reeves, Christine Kaufmann, Fernando Rey) – Classic Movie Review 921

‘The Fiery Summit of Spectacle as the Screen is Swept by Scenes That Stagger the Imagination!’ Director Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone’s 1959 movie (aka originally Gli Ultimi Giorni di Pompeii) is an engaging Italian historical adventure spectacle, remaking the Merian C Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack US 1935 movie (with Preston Foster and Basil Rathbone). This time it features the former Mr Universe, Steve Reeves, as the Pompeiian gladiator Glaucus setting off to save the city.

A legionnaire with the Roman army, Glaucus returns from far-off wars to his Pompeii home, where he finds his father’s been murdered by black-hooded looting bandits. The rather busy Glaucus then sets out to avenge himself on the killers as well as to save the city.

It’s fast moving, quite well made and good of its type, and it is capped off with a still reasonably impressive sequence of the eruption of Vesuvius. Time has helped to make it appealingly kitsch and campy, and it’s quite a lot of fun too. Christine Kaufmann co-stars as Ione, with Fernando Rey as Arbacès, the high priest.

It follows Reeves’s previous muscleman hits Hercules, Goliath and the Barbarians, Hercules Unchained and The Giant of Marathon (1959).

Note the cult names among the scriptwriters: Sergio Leone, Ennio De Concini, Duccio Tessari and Sergio Corbucci. Director Bonnard fell ill on the first day of shooting and Leone directed most of the movie uncredited. He hired many of the same cast and crew for his first credited directorial film The Colossus of Rhodes (1960). Desert regions of Spain were used as locations, setting off the idea for the spaghetti westerns.

Reeves dislocated a shoulder when his chariot collided with a tree during filming, causing him increasing pain thereafter and hastening his retirement from movies.

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It was remade in 1984 as a six-part mini-series, with Nicholas Clay as Glaucus.

And 2014 brings Paul W.S. Anderson’s movie Pompeii. It opened in America on 24 February 2014 to poor reviews and did poor business, costing $100million and taking only $23million in America. Its UK opening was April 30 2014. Kit Harington from Game of Thrones plays Milo, a slave turned invincible gladiator who must try to save his true love Cassia (Emily Browning) as Pompeii crumbles. Giving the film an ignominious one star, Time Out said the film is cheesy and Harington played the role ‘with a six-pack and five fewer facial expressions’.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 921

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