Leofwine_draca A rousing Italian/French peplum adventure yarn, teaming screen legend Steve Reeves with a fine director in Jacques Tourneur and one of the best directors of photography in Italian history - Mario Bava. The combination makes for a beautifully-shot, colourful, and well paced movie, which is a bit slow to start off but soon comes into its own with imaginative battle sequences and a story which is always moving.A clean-shaven Reeves plays Phillipides, an Olympic legend who is a hit with all the ladies - and who finds himself torn between a forbidden beauty, Andromeda, and Karis, a woman ordered to seduce him by the bad guys and who ends up falling in love instead. These romantic subplots are what make up the first half of the film, interspersed with plenty of dancing, a few fights here and there and lots of sweeping spectacle thanks to Bava, who really gives the film an expensive-looking veneer.The second half of the movie concerns an invasion by the Persians, with Phillipides attempting to rally the Spartans to his cause. There's an excellently-shot hand-to-hand combat scene involving an emissary who is attacked by a gang of cut-throats, who outnumber him 5-to-1 but still end up getting beaten. Then the film culminates in an fine sea battle in which the Olympic heroes chuck burning spears at the approaching enemy ship, which retaliates by crushing their own ship with an awkward pair of pincers! At this point, there's also some great underwater photography and lots of violence as underwater attackers are shot and speared by the enemy. Finally, a battle ensues, of which you can probably guess the outcome.Reeves is as good as ever as the masculine hero, and here he's supported by a strong cast which offers some good female characters. Tourneur's direction is assured and Bava's camera-work gives the film fine visual splendour. While the plot may be familiar, even interchangeable stuff, GIANT OF MARATHON is still a fine piece of solid entertainment.

SilverScreenQueen Honestly, I am a fan of Sword and Sandle films. Unfortunately, this did nothing for me. Although the DVD I picked up promised "breathtaking action scenes", the lovey-dovey romance took over most of the film, and the most exciting battle scenes were relegated to the the tail end of the whole movie.Phillipedes is a good example of a "perfect hero". He has very few character flaws, other than being seemingly obsessed with a woman supposedly not meant for him. The main women all swoon or fight over him. His acting was unimpressive, and he is much too perfect to really be an enjoyable character.Theocrates is the classic villain. He quite plainly spends most of his time trying to stir up evil feelings against Phillipedes and abusing others. He was obviously engaged to Andromeda at the beginning, thus setting up 2 different love triangles. He dies a horrible death at the end of this movie, like every villain at the time.Andromeda, I'll give her, is very beautiful, but is just the classic blonde. Obsessed with Phillipedes, she shows no real strength of character. She is simply an attractive goddess with few other attributes. Her name, as in the Ethiopian princess, is meant to give an air of extreme beauty, which is her only outstanding trait.Characters like Karis took away from the plot. She was just there to prolong the movie and draw out the story, making it more difficult to follow. The dark-haired, cold hearted beauty, she obviously could never compare to the sunny-haired, bright-eyed blonde she is competing with.Worst of all was the filmography. The whole movie was in a terrible state. The version I watched was dark, grainy, and in poor shape in general. The colors seemed very fake and out of place, even for a late '50s film.Predictable plot, standardized characters, and fake sets? This was clearly not an action movie. It should instead have been labeled as a love story in the simpler days of our world.

funkyfry I'm thinking that it's extremely unfortunate, from the perspective of this film or of those who would like to enjoy this film, that Jacques Tourneur seems to have departed from the production rather early. Certainly the pace of the film is completely dead in the water and the direction is more the listless early style of Mario Bava, who was uncredited for his direction of this film. Bava excelled when he was able to put aside plot and character and just focus on atmosphere, but this film did not allow him to do that. Instead it features many dialog scenes and a rather dull political story that Bava is unable to make digestible. The action scenes are fairly good towards the end, and there are some nice shots with the classic Bava lighting. That's about it.Steve Reeves is our hero, this time appearing (as he did 3 years early in his debut in Ed Wood's "Jailbait") sans beard. He plays Phillipides, an Olympic champion caught up in the Greco-Persian war. He's in love with blonde Andromeda (Mylène Demongeot), whose father Creuso (Ivo Garrani) is part of an aristocratic plot to overthrow Athens' democracy and replace it with a Persian puppet government.The first half of the film is basically setting up the romance and the war, and then in the second half you mostly see Steve Reeves running for what seems like 15 minutes, and then a huge naval battle with some interesting underwater photography.Only a few of the shots in the film seem to bear any mark of Tourneur's style, such as the one that shows the Persian King Darius (Daniele Vargas) framed against his legions of soldiers in extreme closeup to contrast with the background. My guess personally is that Bava directed most of this film. It is a dull film even compared to Bava's Hercules films with Reeves.

MARIO GAUCI A momentous collaboration between two (past and future) masters of the horror genre which should perhaps have been made in that particular field, especially since the overall effect (as with most Italian low-grade epics) is somewhat juvenile - unlike either's best work - but also because there are no monsters involved (unlike, say, THE GIANTS OF THESSALY [1960])! Steve Reeves and Sergio Fantoni make for an above-average hero and villain; Daniela Rocca fares a lot better here than she would do in COLOSSUS AND THE AMAZON QUEEN (1960); and Mylene Demongeot is one of the loveliest heroines in all peplums, evoking memories of the early Brigitte Bardot - who had herself appeared in a supporting role in HELEN OF TROY (1955), one of many film versions centering around another legendary Greek battle (among them THE Trojan HORSE [1961], starring Reeves himself and which I watched later on in my peplum marathon!).The slow-starting film (which, thankfully, features no intrusive comic relief) eventually picks up with the impressive battle sequence, which occupies about half its length! Bava's camera-work is exemplary and his special effects are apparent in the over-the-top violence, particularly towards the end.