Atlas

... that is, if you dig flicks that involve men wearing really high cut "togas" that look more like skirts. The battle scenes are absolutely laughable, with lots of shots of shields being hit by things (occasionally the wooden swords), and lots of guys who throw spears really poorly at their crew-cut Greek rivals. The charges just sort of slow in front of enemy lines, once even to turn around and change a formation four feet from the "battle line." Some of the editing looks like it may have been done by a deranged chimp, and that's just for the important dialogue scenes. There are a few shots where the camera literally gets knocked out of place. A final word of warning: the director took full advantage of shot width, so if you are unfortunate enough to watch this on tv, several scenes will have half of the speakers cut off at the edge of the screen. If you need something to MST3K, come and get it!

As much as I am a fan of Michael Forest from Star Trek, The Outer Limits,to name a few - this movie is an absolute farce. Frank Wolf who up to this point is really a 3rd rate actor, is the lead bad guy in this movie that plays out like a high school play with just a handful of extras. 1st blunder is when they announce that the wrestling match will begin when the trumpets blow. The trouble is that the horns are never heard. The Wardrobe Designer must have been on break with Barbara Morris wearing shorts that look like she should be on the set of Beach Blanket Bingo and not a Greek sword and sandal movie. The story line is very poor and really makes no sense. Soupy Sales could have played the lead baddie with the same results.

Proximates the Tyrant is a brutal arrogant conqueror. Atlas is his personal warrior but eventually, the hero sees the evil within his king.

Roger Corman is trying to do a sword and sandal epic. It's bad. The acting is bad. The writing is bad. They are able to use some nice sets. Most of them are ruins in Greece. Otherwise, it's all rather bad.

1960's "Atlas" was Roger Corman's impoverished attempt at a Hercules-type epic (shot on location in Greece), without the budget. Charles B. Griffith could always be relied upon to deliver a script very quickly, and the haste is quite evident here, as the dialogue sounds risibly modernistic, and American actor Frank Wolff hilariously dubbed. Judging from his previous work on "A Bucket of Blood" and "The Little Shop of Horrors," one can easily conclude that this was written as a satire, and it does deliver a few chuckles. Star Michael Forest, like Wolff a veteran of Corman's "Ski Troop Attack" and "Beast from Haunted Cave," looked more impressive years later bare chested on both GILLIGAN'S ISLAND and STAR TREK. As the battle scenes come off as anemic, the only visually arresting image remains the comely Barboura Morris, who spent her entire career in Corman's service, until her untimely death at age 43 in 1975. "Atlas" made its only appearance on Pittsburgh's Chiller Theater during its first season, alternating Saturday afternoons and Sunday nights, airing Sat March 14 1964, while the Sunday night co-feature (which likewise never repeated) was 1958's "Spy in the Sky!"

Cheap, sure. Corman --- of course. But not the usual fare, not even for the King of the B's. Here's the backstory: Corman was in Europe shooting another feature and supposedly entered into a co-production deal with another company. At the last moment his co-producers pulled out and took their money with them. Now Corman had two choices: abandon the project, or shoot the script he had for half the money he'd budgeted. Which did he choose? Well, the movie got made didn't it? Screenwriter Charles Griffith had also written LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS and originally wanted to call this movie ATLAS, THE GUIDED MUSCLE, but Corman nixed that. So we get Steve Forrest (who also played Apollo on a STAR TREK episode) as a slightly malnourished looking Atlas, standing around with a bunch of extras in Greek costumes (including Griffith and Corman himself), looking around at the "grandeur" of ancient Greece, a bunch of the crumbling ruins which the villain explains away by saying "Well, we've been at war so long all the buildings have been demolished" or something like that. I'm not going to pretend this is a GOOD movie, but it's a great example of the unstoppable Corman machine in action.