The Avenger (1962)
6/10
Decent Peplum with the corpulent Steve Reeves , inspired by the classy ¨The Aeneid¨ written by Publius Vergilius Maro
23 July 2017
At the beginning there are some flashbacks about Aeneas and the Trojan war . As the Greek warriors under the command of Ulysses get to hide out in the Troyan horse with his fellow soldiers and get those Trojans when they take the wooden beast into their city . When they're successful and having survived the destruction of Troy , the nobleman Aeneas takes his men to getaway : Euryalus (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) and Nisius (Benito Stefanelli) , as the survivors deciding to go off , making their way to Italy and found the city of Rome . As Aeneas leads escapees from the Trojan war to new land in Italy , and must deal with new threats to his people , as the powerful Aeneas and his mighty sword avenged a nation . This time muscleman Aeneas/Steve Reeves , helped by the Etruscos , leads the Trojans in battle against the Rutuli army commanded King Turno (Gianni Garco) .

This is supposedly a rendition of the Aeneid by Virgil . The film has neither expecting historical , not mythological accuracy . Acceptable Peplum with drama , noisy action , thrills , sword-fights , and resulting to be pretty entertaining . It's an adventure film with all the ingredients as sword-play , action , fights , betrayal , a love story and typical confrontation between good guys and bad guys . The film displays some impressive scenes about battles in spectacular style , including lots of extras . Here Steve Reeves plays Aeneas ; He-man Steve was a hunk who made great number of roman epic films also called ¨Musclemen movies¨ . He was the most known of a number of bodybuilder and physique model types in the early 60s and won campy notice playing Herculean characters in those campy Italian sand-and-spear epics . Ursus , Maciste , Goliath , Samson , Hércules , Atlas , Rocha ..., those Italian Muscle man producers must have had a hard time figuring out what to call the musclebound actors who played all these legendary muscleman heroes . Being other second-class Muscle men players the followings : Gordon Scott , Dan Vadis , Rock Stevens , Gordon Mitchell , Brad Harris , Samson Burke , Reg Park , Ed Fury , Richard Harrison , Kirk Morris , Alan Steel or Sergio Ciani and subsequently Lou Ferrigno . As Reeves played various Sword and Sandal movies , such as : ¨The Trojan horse¨ , and his sequel : ¨The avenger¨ , ¨The giant of Marathon¨ , ¨Goliat and the Barbarians¨ , ¨The last days of Pompeii¨ , and especially ¨Hércules¨ and ¨Hércules unchained¨ by Pietro Francisci . Although Steve also played adventure genre as ¨Pirates of the seven seas¨ , ¨ The thief of Baghdad¨ and ¨Morgan the pirate¨ . Support cast is pretty good , such as : Gianni Garco : famous Spaghetti hero as Sartana , Liana Orfei , Nerio Bernardi , Ferrari , Enzo Fiermonte and the ordinary master of arms : Benito Stefanelli who also did some of the stunts , trained the other players in fencing and choreographed the battles .

The motion picture was regularly directed by Giorgo Rivalta who produced several adventure movies as : ¨Il Cavaliere Di Maison Rouge¨ , ¨La Vendetta Dei Tughs¨ , ¨Misteri Della Giungla Nera¨ , ¨Treasure of Bengala¨ , ¨I Piombi Di Venezia¨ , ¨Son of Lagardere¨ and ¨Le Marchand De Venise¨ and directed ¨Los Cosacos¨ , ¨Il Prigioniero Del Re¨ and ¨The avenger¨ . Being co-directed by veteran filmmaker Albert Band . Albert was one of Hollywood's most prolific filmmakers who started his career in the early 50s . He began financing a number of motion pictures through the seventies and seventies and directing in Italy some films as Spaghetti westerns : ¨The tramplers¨ and ¨Massacre in grand canyon¨ . Albert helped his son , Charles Band, bring together his own production company, 'Empire Pictures' , in the early eighties , producing/directing films as : ¨Zoltan hound of Drácula¨ , ¨Ghoulies¨ , ¨Doctor Mordrid¨ , ¨Robot Jox¨ , ¨Robot wars¨ . Upon the collapse of Empire Pictures in the early nineties, Band continued to work with his son and help bring a number of low-budget and medium budget films to the Hollywood screen and direct to video releases such as : ¨Pet Shop¨ , ¨Prehysteria! 1 and 2¨ , ¨Dragonworld¨ , ¨Oblivion¨ , ¨Remote¨ , ¨Trancers¨ series , among others.
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