The Avenger

I saw "The Trojan Horse" a few months ago, the version starring Steve Reeves and I enjoyed it. It's one of the best Sword & Sandals. I thought it was more successful than Robert Wise's HELEN OF TROY or the recent bloated version starring Brad Pitt, which is best forgotten. Wise's HELEN OF TROY is a sharply directed film that's hampered by a lack luster script and a freadfully dull ending. After enjoying the Steve Reeves version of the famous Greek story, I was ready to watch the sequel, "The War of the Trojans".

Though another Steve Reeves film like GOLIATH & THE BARBARIANS might be more entertaining to most viewers, the cheese factor keeps it from being a great film. Well this isn't the case with "The War of the Trojans". The cheese factor is very low and the direction is taught and tight. The story is somewhat predictable, certainly for someone who recently watched something like 75 S&S films in a few months but even the familiar storyline wasn't enough to diminish the film's impact.

The story continues right after the excellent "The Trojan Horse", when the fleeing people of Troy arrive in Italy and try to settle there. Problems arise when the King of a nearby Kingdom grants the people of Troy the right to live near the Tiber river. In-fighting within the Kingdom, lead by Turno, who sees the Trojans as a threat, creates a scheme to make the Trojans look evil. A war between the Trojans and the Kingdom erupts. Losing the battle, the Trojans, lead by Aeneas (played by the legendary Steve Reeves), become allies with the Etruscans, the sworn enemies of the Kingdom. The neverending battle causes a lot of deaths and casualties on both sides. Desperate to end the war, both sides agree to settle the war with a duel between Aeneas and Turno.

The beginning is talky but it's worth staying on for what's to come. Here's a short list of memorable scenes: when Aeneas sees the mural which recounts the battle of Troy, with flashbacks from "The Trojan Horse". For once, flashbacks from another movie actually work here; the archery duel; the scene with the wild boars; the killing of Eurialo; the duel at the end.

The cast is surprisingly good, with memorable characterization by the Queen and King Turno. The Queen is unforgettable, whoever played her. And King Turno is well played by Gianni Garko. Fans of SPACE 1999 will recognize Garko, who was Toni Cellini in the famous DRAGON'S DOMAIN episode. The only really weak part of the cast is Camilla, the young Amazonian woman. The purpose of her character is interesting but her dated hairstyle and appearance are the only incongruous elements in the film. The sets look real. Yes, it's not as spectacular and elaborate as "The Trojan Horse" but it doesn't need big moments to demonstrate the struggle of the displaced Trojan people which lead to the creation of Rome. And the score is excellent, one of the best I've heard in a Peplum. But the thing that tie all this beautifully together is the mature and assured direction. The compositions and constant smooth tracking shots give the film a greater professional look/feel than most films of the genre, which are often described static. Many moments could have easily turned into typical Peplum camp or silliness but here they were sharply set-up, creating tense or genuine emotional moments up to end. And one feels they actually learned something about history too. The film is believable too, which is no mean feat for a Sword & Sandal film.

I've watched many S&S films recently and this one stands out from the pack. It's clearly overlooked. People must have had Peplum fatigue back then for this film to be forgotten as it is now.

"The Trojan Horse" and "War of the Trojans" make an excellent double bill, for fans of Steve Reeves but history buffs as well.

The Trojans in Lazio - Steve Reeves as Aeneas

This historical adventure film by Giorgio Venturini, made in 1962, was based on motifs from Vergil's (also known as: Publius Vergilius Maro) Latin epic "Aeneid". The film, called "La leggenda di Enea" in Italian and "The Avenger" in English, is the sequel to "La battaglia di Troja" by Giorgio Ferroni, also starring Steve Reeves. The filming took place in what was then Yugoslavia.

After losing the war for their hometown of Troy, the remaining Trojans flee across the Mediterranean and, under the leadership of Aeneas (Steve Reeves), reach Latium, where they finally want to settle after a long wandering. The local King Latino (Mario Ferrari) is benevolent towards the Trojan refugees and would like to allow them to settle. The leaders of the other tribes are not really happy about this, so violent conflicts arise. Important opponents are Liana Orfei as the combative Camilla (like her cousin Moira Orfei ("Ursus in the Valley of the Lions"), she comes from an Italian family of artists and was seen several times in Italian films of the time, including alongside Lex Barker in "I pirati della costa"), Gianni Garko as the frighteningly cunning Turnus and Maurice Poli as his willing henchman. Euryalus (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) and the beautiful Lavinia (Carla Marlier) stand by Aeneas and his Trojans.

With the powerful fight scenes, in which not only Steve Reeves can shine as the title hero, and the relatively large number of characters with their different ways of acting for a peplum or sandal film, this film strives to achieve a certain level in order to do justice to the literary original become. This is also quite successful. However, it's all too easy to see the tricks in film, for example when Steve Reeves' double is used or individual fighters don't seem as motivated as they should be.

The end of the fighting shown in the film creates the basis for the later emergence of the city of Rome, which would then result in Roman world domination for almost a whole millennium. The Trojan Aeneas is considered a pioneer of later Rome, which is what Virgil's "Aeneid" is also about. The area around today's Rome is still called Lazio, which can be seen, for example, in the name of the well-known football club Lazio Roma.

With slight reservations, this film is not only worth seeing for fans of the peplum genre!

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!!

Did Steve Reeves make any decent movies outside of the first two Hercules films?

This is a sequel to the Trojan Horse.

Trojans, fleeing from the remains of Troy end up in Italy and get mixed up with the Etruscans. The Trojans want a place to stay, but... The king is cool with it,the prince is not. A princess loves Reeves, but ends up involved with the prince... The prince sets up the Trojans and after 40 to 45 minutes of court intrigue a war breaks out, but its dull. Ultimately it comes down to Reeves and the prince fighting in silly helmets, which isn't revealing anything since its supposedly history and its in the trailer.

I paid for this on video tape for what reason?

Don't make my mistake, avoid this film.

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/