LA REVOLTE DES PRETORIENS (1964)
aka Revolt of the Praetorians, La rivolta dei pretoriani
Article 4474 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 3-14-2014
Directed by Alfonso Brescia
Featuring Richard Harrison, Moira Orfei, Piero Lulli
Country: Italy
What it is: Sword and Sandal epic

In ancient Rome, a hero known as the Red Wolf fights against the tyranny of the emperor Domitian.

According to my sources, the fantastic content in this foray into Sword and Sandal territory is the existence of a conjurer. I wonder if they mean the priestess of Isis who is in league with Domition. If so, I don’t recall her having any special powers or doing anything more than giving her goddess lip service. There’s also a line of dialogue about the hero’s fantastic strength, but I don’t see him doing much of anything that I would call superhuman. So that leaves us with a movie that is pretty empty in the way of fantastic content, and the basic tyranny-vs-revolution plot doesn’t have much in the way of real interest value to compensate for that, at least to these eyes. It is fairly well made, though, and it does get some points with coming up with a fun little gimmick towards the end of the movie, when the revolutionaries get the help of a troupe of entertainers to help them; their involvement in the battle scenes adds some real fun to the proceedings. Nonetheless, I found this one mostly dull.