L'eroe di Babilonia (1963)

Director:

Siro Marcellini

Writers:

Gian Paolo Callegari (writer)
Siro Marcellini (writer)

Release Date:

23 August 1963 (Italy)

Genre:

Adventure

Tagline:

Slave girls sacrificed at the whim of a ruthless king!

Plot:

The rightful heir to the throne of Babylon leads a slave revolt against an evil ruler. |

Plot Keywords:

Peplum | Hercules

Cast

  (Cast overview, first billed only)

Gordon Scott	...	Nippur
Geneviève Grad	...	Tamira
Andrea Scotti	...	Namar
Célina Cély	...	Agar
Moira Orfei	...	Ura
Mario Petri	...	Zairo, King of Persia
Piero Lulli	...	Balthazar
Andrea Aureli	...	Anarsi
Giuseppe Addobbati	...	Licardio
Paola Petrini
Harold Bradley	...	Mursuk
Aldo Pini
Giuseppe Mattei
Oreste Lionello
Consalvo Dell'Arti

Also Known As:

Goliath (Italy)
Goliath, King of Slaves (informal English title)
Héros de Babylone (France)
Hero of Babylon (informal English title)
The Beast of Babylon Against the Son of Hercules (USA) (TV title)

Runtime:

93 min | USA:98 min

Country:

Italy | France

Language:

Italian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

Compagnia Internazionale Realizzazioni Artistiche Cinematografiche (CIRAC)

Italian epic with struggles, intrigues, luxurious scenarios and quite entertaining

The tyrant Balthazar(habitual nasty Spaghetti Western ,Folco Lulli), usurper of Babylone, rules the city with violence and atrocities. He organizes continuous sacrifices of maids along with the priestess(Moira Orfei, usual Peplum along with her sister Liana Orfei) of Astarte. Nippur(Gordon Scott),legitimate heir of throne, returns from exile with aim to retrieve the kingdom left by his father Sargon, kidnapped by Balthazar. During journey , Nippur frees Tamira(Genevieve Grad), a Jewish girl prepared to be sacrificed for Goddess Ishtar. Nippur is imprisoned by the usurper, but he escapes and is helped by king Persian Cyrus(Mario Petri).

This is an agreeable Sword and Sandals movie with noisy action, extraordinaries adventures, usual dancing scenes and spectacular final battles. Gordon Scott is nice as the mythical hero who finds several dangerous situations while attempting save his lover and recover the throne. He acted as a bouncing hero in great number of films and was randomly assigned the identity of Hercules, Goliath, Samsom for US viewers . Scott usually playing historic characters, such as ¨Coroliano, Mucius Scevola and Remo¨. He was one along with Ed Fury, Dan Vadis, Alain Steel, Mark Forest, Reg Park, among others, whom the seek fame and fortune acting absurdly muscle mythological figures, but nobody topped Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott in popularity.

The film follows a similar plot to famous film ¨Intolerance¨(1916)by DW Griffith, about the fall of Babylone, though here appears a pretty malicious Balthazar, well played by Folco Lulli, but not the biblical history about 'prophet Daniel and the lions' . However the movie has not mythological accuracy neither expecting historical. Another pictures about these Babylonic events are the following: ¨I Semiramide(1953)¨by Primo Zeglio with Ivonne Furneaux and John Erickson; ¨Semiramis, slave and Queen¨ by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia; and ¨Seven thunderbolts(1962)¨ by Silvio Amadio with Jackie Lane and Howard Duff .