Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Kamila Bell This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

bkoganbing The Avenger covers the story of Aeneas and how he led some survivors of Troy into exile on the Italian peninsula. Steve Reeves repeats his role Aeneas from The Trojan War as the exiled Trojans look to make a new home.Unfortunately in Etruscan Italy their addition complicates what looks like a delicately balanced situation among a lot of petty kings. One of them covets the land the Trojans have been granted on to settle.In the tradition of the Trojan War the film is cut above a lot of the Peplum epics that the Italians were churning out in the early 60s, taking advantage of those sets left over from Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis. It's all based on Virgil's Aeneid.And we get to see more of Steve Reeves physical development. That's what many were plunking their money down to see/

Leofwine_draca THE LAST GLORY OF TROY - aka WAR OF THE Trojans, aka THE AVENGER - is the sequel to THE WOODEN HORSE OF TROY, a film that portrayed the Trojan War and also starred Steve Reeves as the eponymous hero Aeneas. This time around, the Trojans are a defeated people, having fled from their sacked city, but a mixture of courage and cunning sees them go on to found what is modern-day Rome.Unfortunately THE LAST GLORY OF TROY is a somewhat lacklustre sequel that more often than not is a rather BORING peplum flick. It has relatively lengthy running time, and much of that running time is made up of small talk between dull characters. Even Steve Reeves doesn't have much of a part to play here, feeling like a supporting character in his own movie, although the cast is populated with familiar faces including Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Liana Orfei and Gianni Garko.The film does pick up for its second half, offering a handful of battle sequences, although the choreography isn't particularly great in these. But it lacks the tight script and focus of the first film and with six different scriptwriters credited it feels like a bit of a confused mess, struggling to make sense of itself.

MARIO GAUCI This is an unnecessary and very much inferior sequel to THE Trojan HORSE (1961), evidently made on a reduced budget (though the murky, pan-and-scan print I watched certainly did no favors to it or the scenes from the original which were interspersed into the narrative as flashbacks!); Steve Reeves reprises his role of Enea - whose lineage, we are told, eventually led to Romulus and Remus and the founding of Rome (incidentally, the actor appeared in a peplum about that very event called DUEL OF THE TITANS [1961]!) - but his performance here is somewhat mechanical and less convincing...though that may be due to the English dubbing, whereas I had watched the earlier film in Italian!! As a whole, THE AVENGER (the print I watched bore the title THE LAST GLORY OF TROY, given to it when sold to TV) is only marginally better than the ordinary peplum: the plot is rather dreary this time around, in comparison to the fascinating events depicted in the original; the cast - despite the presence of Euro-Cult regulars like Gianni Garko (essaying the role of the villain) and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart (effectively dispatched by a hail of arrows in the style of Akira Kurosawa's THRONE OF BLOOD [1957]!) - is less interesting; and the battle sequences are only memorable for the ridiculously-shaped helmets with which the warriors on both fronts are saddled!!

Poseidon-3 Famous muscle man Reeves appears here in a sequel of sorts to "The Trojan Horse". Having been displaced, along with a large contingent of his people, after The Trojan War, Reeves attempts to settle in a patch of land along the Tiber River. The King who governs the area is fairly agreeable to this, but most of the surrounding territories are against it. The Queen is especially repelled by the idea and wants her daughter to inherit everything through her own contributions and an arranged marriage. Reeves and his people are betrayed and reviled until finally a large battle erupts with several different contingents fighting it out. Reeves is as handsome as ever, but perhaps less animated than he was in other, more lively films such as this. He flashes back occasionally (and briefly) to the previous film, which, by comparison, seems like a more grand one. There are still things to enjoy here, though, such as Reeves competing in an archery contest in order to thwart the cocky Prince who thinks he's unbeatable. There's also an interesting assault on Reeves' compound in which arrows fly while the inhabitants try to collect them for their own use in resistance. Camp arrives in the form of Orfei, as a curvy, but strong warrior princess. She rides with the men and fights with them while wearing a teeny mini-dress and a gold band around her impossibly bouffant hair (which she does manage to smash under a helmet for the big skirmish!) She's startlingly similar to Stefanie Powers, which adds an almost surreal element to her scenes. Then there's another ruler (on Reeves' side) who, while riding horseback during the archery contest, lifts up in his saddle to reveal a wedgie and two gleaming butt cheeks! While this is certainly not the greatest sword and sandal flick out there, it remains watchable and reasonably engrossing. Reeves is always easy on the eyes, in any case and should be admired for his commitment to healthy, steroid-free body-building.