The Trojan Horse
The Trojan Horse
NR | 01 July 1962 (USA)
The Trojan Horse Trailers

Trojan hero Aeneas battles to save his city from the Greeks, but once Troy falls, he leads the 600 survivors to Italy and founds the city of Rome.

Reviews
Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Doomtomylo a film so unique, intoxicating and bizarre that it not only demands another viewing, but is also forgivable as a satirical comedy where the jokes eventually take the back seat.
Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.
Leoni Haney Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
clanciai Steve Reeves was never a good actor, at best he makes a naïve impression, but usually, like in all his later films, he was just a completely expressionless muscular dummy. In comparison with Robert Wise's "Helen of Troy" a few years earlier, this is like a miniature gipsum copy of a magnificent marble statue. It tries to be monumental, though, and there is some stylishness over the set-up, but the acting is stilted, and even the best actors, like Ulysses, are merely types. The best actors are the women, especially Cassandra och Creussa.The action starts where Homer's Iliad ends, with the desecration of Hector's body and moves up to the fall of Troy with mammoth scenes impressive enough of the apocalyptic destruction of the city, so it's not a disappointing film, although the slow action more often enough will send you to sleep, and you can do other things at the same time while you are watching it.
Majid-Hamid There is nothing much to say...this is the best movie by Steve Reeves, not Hercules definitely!! I've watched this 10 years ago on TV, and ,only after 10 years i get a chance to buy this movie in VCD. I just couldn't find any DVD copy available, it's a rare movie in Malaysia, huhuhu..The acting and performance from most of the actors are surprisingly good, the plot movie is great where it is about the wooden horse, and yet the dialog and the dubbing in English version are not really too bad. definitely the best Steve Reeves movie ever.i also recommend The Avenger and Morgan The Pirate...u can also check out A Long Ride From Hell, it's really a good western movie.10/10 stars
MARIO GAUCI I had missed out on a chance to watch this on the big screen during the B-movie retrospective at the 2004 Venice Film Festival; with hindsight, I feel that it's a picture that should be viewed in theaters as the TV screen simply can't do justice to its spectacular widescreen photography! As a matter of fact, of all the peplums I've been watching of late, this has probably been afforded the highest budget; it's certainly the most handsome production of the lot...I had watched two other films about the famous and lengthy Trojan War - Robert Wise's HELEN OF TROY (1955) and Wolfgang Petersen's TROY (2004), a Maltese co-production that was filmed (for the most part) over here - but this Italian version more than holds its own when set up against them! Steve Reeves has perhaps his most substantial role (apart from that of Hercules, which made his name) and, despite his notable physique (which is put to the test against legendary Greek hero Achilles), his character is a peace-loving man and certainly more thoughtful than usual for him. His wife (Paris' sister, whom he married in secret) is played by lovely French actress Juliette Mayniel - who had earlier movingly played one of the victims in Georges Franju's seminal horror masterpiece EYES WITHOUT A FACE (1959); interestingly, director Giorgio Ferroni had just made a good variant on that film called MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN (1960)! Understandably, the narrative only tackles the last year of the war, so that Hector (perhaps the strongest figure in TROY) is already dead when the film opens; similarly, the relationship between Paris (actually presented as the villain of the piece, if still basically wimpish) and Helen (whose role is pretty much left in the background) has deteriorated considerably - which only serves to give the senselessness of the unending carnage added poignancy! At the forefront of the plot are two other historical figures: in fact, Achilles is so impressively personified by Euro-Cult regular Arturo Dominici (best known as Javutich, Barbara Steele's powerful and devoted acolyte in Mario Bava's BLACK Sunday [1960]) that the film loses some steam once he is famously dispatched by an arrow in his heel; similarly, John Drew Barrymore (as Ulysses) is a dominant personality during the film's first half but, once the Trojan Horse is constructed (conveniently off-screen), he pretty much disappears from the narrative! The same fate, alas, befalls the characters of Priam, Menelaus and Agamemnon; all of these roles would receive a lot more stature in TROY, and also the luxury of such stalwart performers as Peter O'Toole, Brendan Gleeson and Brian Cox respectively! Another regrettable element in the film is the fact that every soldier that is felled bursts out into exaggerated wailings and screams, which renders the otherwise efficiently-handled battle scenes unintentionally amusing! So, while the film does sag a bit during its last lap, the scenes depicting the destruction of Troy by the wily Greeks and the subsequent flight of the survivors (including Reeves and his new-born child, Mayniel's character having died giving birth to it!) are certainly worth waiting for - though obviously done on a lesser scale than would be the case in TROY - and the film, as a whole, still emerges as one of the best peplums out there...
steven-222 Having watched a spate of Trojan War movies recently, I have to say this is among the best. It's not as epic as Robert Wise's excellent HELEN OF TROY from 1956, but far superior to the lame 2003 TV movie of that title and also to the Brad Pitt vehicle TROY.The story begins at the very end of the war, with events in full swing. The focus is on the Trojan noble Aeneas (Steve Reeves), a man of peace forced by circumstance to become a great warrior. Paris and Helen are portrayed as burned-out, bitter lovers; Paris's death scene is quite dramatic. The various Greek besiegers (Achilles, Ajax, etc.) are sharply drawn.The sets are wonderful. The CGI monstrosities of TROY and even the imposing sets for Wise's HELEN OF TROY were far too overblown to be historically credible; here we see a much more likely representation of the Bronze Age city, with a low wall, small but exquisite temples, dirt streets, and a populace weary of siege and infighting. The camp of the Greeks is built on an equally convincing scale.Anchoring the whole film is Reeves' portrayal of Aeneas. Playing Hercules made him world famous, but this is the role he was born for. His heroic stature is truly impressive. Happily, he reprised the role in a sequel, LAST GLORY OF TROY (LA LEGGENDA DI ENEA), which picks up the story of Aeneas after his flight from Troy and his arrival in Italy, where once again the warrior must make take up arms to achieve the peace he desires. In both movies, the filmmakers' use of elements from The Iliad of Homer and The Aeneid of Virgil is intelligent and laudable. Together these films deliver a truly impressive vision of the earliest legends of ancient Rome.
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