Demetrius and the Gladiators

Being born in 1956, this film has had it's run on my TV screen for years. I have always enjoyed this movie even with it's campy backdrops and fake tiger scenes.

The first positive, is that Susan Hayward was and is a babe throughout this film, and awful easy on the eyes. Second, add a young Anne Bancroft and Debra Paget, and the film goes babe-fest! What's not to like?

Yes, Jay Robinson does go way overboard as Caligula, and Victor Mature was a bit too wholesome as Demetrius, but the guy never really took himself too serious as an actor to start with. Toss in Michael Rennie, William Marshall, a young Richard Egan (300 Spartans), and Earnest baby, and your get a star-studded action film that holds it's own in the world of even worse Roman epics like the tortuous "Fall of the Roman Empire".

I sat through that no-action/women (Ok Sophia!) bore in a theater for as long as my mother could put up with her two boys squirming and bellyaching about the 188 minute run time. Alas, with us tag-teaming her, she never lasted to see the end of that film!