The Slave

Steve Reeves plays a high-ranking Roman centurion who finds out he's the son of the infamous rebel slave leader and spearheads a revolt, of course, in one of the better "sword & sandal" entries. Mixing the backstory of Moses (instead of a swaddling cloth, an amulet gives him away) with the exploits of a comic book superhero (Reeves sneaks off every now and then to shuck his tunic for dad's face-covering armor), director Corbucci took the tale and ran with it, producing some impressive mise-en-scène amidst his unexpectedly inventive camera-work. Gianna Maria Canale as Crassus' cougar wife does little more than lounge around on divans and ogle our hero but no matter, it's always a pleasure to see her in peplum like this.

This is one of Steve Reeve's best ever films and possibly the last one in which he was in a tribune or Roman centurion costume...... Italian director Sergio Corbucci conconted up an idea to continue the life of Spartacus with Reeves as his son gaining a large measure of revenge on corrupt Roman counsel Ceasar Crassus who is running an illegal corrupt empire right in the heart of roman territory....In fact Crassus is getting so powerful that Ceaser himself sends Reeves to investigate what Crassus's methods are and report back to Caeser. Along the way on his trip to see Crassus the ship that Reeves is in hits a river barge and dumps him and a lovely Italian slave named Saida into the river. Reeves survives and he and Saida walk through the roman desert unaware that slave drivers are rounding up all the slaves they can to be bought and sold. Reeves and his gal are captured and Reeves breaks loose from the pack and wreaks his revenge on slave leaders with some dazzling sword work, wiping out a flock of slave drivers. One of the members of the slave band recognize a medallion worn by Reeves as the symbol of Spartacus, since the slave member was a member of Spartacus's force twenty years earlier. Reeves initially is unconvinced that he is truly the son of Spartacus and muses in a catacomb about his true identity. He sees the sword handle of Spartacus and it is the same talisman as his medallion. Reeves recognizes his true heritage and goes to work on wiping out Crassus and his evil empire......raid by raid Reeves and his band wipe out Crassus's gang all the while maintaining his identity as a roman centurion from Caesar.....in the end Reeves is caught and given a death sentence by Crassus....his followers then free him and Caesar must make a decision as to whether or not Reeves followed his orders as a true centurion. Caesar gives Reeves a death sentence but Reeves followers come to his rescue and Caesar relents. Good love story and the beautiful Ombretta Colli is Reeves's love interest. After this film Reeves became "Sandokan" and made one western in 1966 before retiring for good. I just love this film and Reeves had that marvelous physique that made any man drool!!!!! The immortal Steve Reeves, what a face and a body......

After the international success of HERCULES, the Steve Reeves Swords-and-Sandals vehicle THE SLAVE clearly had some money spent on its production values -- good costumes and some nice sets to accent good camera lighting abound. The plot, typical of peplum movies, is a mishmosh of themes intended to take advantage of recent hits.

Reeves is a Roman centurion working for the noble Julius Caesar in Rome. He is captured by leopard-skin wearing desert barbarians working for the evil Crassus, escapes, gets captured again, is enslaved, identified as Spartacus' son (hence the movie's Italian title) and leads a slave rebellion.

Director Sergio Corbucci does his usual highly competent job, abetted by the handsome production values that Cinecitta was capable of; kudos especially to director of Photography Enzo Baroni, whose lighting suggests illustrations on parchment. Although the writing never rises above the level of silliness that such cheap epics aspired to, fans of the genre will find plenty to enjoy.

From Sergio Corbucci, director of the classic spaghetti westerns "The Great Silence" and "Django," comes a routine, but serviceable Italian sword-and-sandal epic staring Steve Reeves, best know for his many Hercules films. This was Reeves final on-screen appearance in this particular genre, later moving onto pirate and western films. "The Slave" has Reeves cast a Roman soldier who discovers he's actually the son of Spartacus, a slave turned gladiator turned rebel leader against the Roman Empire. Like his father, Reeves ends up leading a slave revolt. Unlike the Stanley Kubrick version of Spartacus, this film is minus interesting characters, dialogue, and narrative. However, Corbucci does bring strong visuals to the film and the production values of "The Slave" is better than most Italian sword-and-sandal pictures, which makes this film worth checking out for fans of these admittedly silly films.

That "Il figlio di Spartacus" is one of the better sword'n'sandal flicks of the main period (1958-64) is basically due to two aspects: a fluent storyline and original sets in Egypt.

Writers Adriano Bolzoni, Bruno Corbucci and Giovanni Grimaldi (plus perhaps director Sergio Corbucci) have scripted a plot that continues the story of Spartacus where Stanley Kubrick left off in 1960 in his Hollywood production with Kirk Douglas. While Kubrick certainly stuck to the historical facts, the follow-up is complete fiction. Tough daredevil Douglas is replaced by smart bodybuilder Steve Reeves as his son, although this was not the worst choice. Reeves, the original Hercules performer of 1958, does quite well in the rôle of Randus, a Roman centurio (this seems to be considered as the highest military rank in "peplums"!), who is confronted with the fact that he seems to be the son of the legendary slave leader, Spartacus, who had once been smashed and crucified by the Roman consul, Crassus. Reeves' good looks distinguish him from Douglas very remarkably, but there's his Germanic combatant Verus (Franco Balducci), who is styled like Douglas two years ealier.

They needed to change history to a considerable extent (the story takes place in 48 B.C. when the real Crassus was already dead for five years) so that the fictive Randus could be 23 (Reeves was 36 by then) and Caesar could be involved. Note that the Sphinx has already lost its nose (which it did only 1850 years later) while serving as a likeable background to a talk between Caesar (Ivo Garrani), his adjutant Verulus (Renato Baldini, who has almost nothing to say), and Randus. Choosing the Egyptian landscape, including desert, oases and the pyramids of Gizeh, for the outdoor scenes adds greatly to the picture's atmosphere.

Corbucci manages to handle the camera positions and angles very well, almost experimentally for a production like this. Director of photography was Enzo Barboni, the later standard director of the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer movies. There is a foreshadowing of the spaghetti westerns not only in the techniques, but also with a surprisingly high level of brutality as depicted by Corbucci.

The story's main idea has Randus in the dilemma of being a Roman officer on the one hand and having the experience of being enslaved on the other. Only in this situation, he feels into the slaves' minds and puts himself at the head of the revolt against Crassus. The rest is a bit stealing from the "Zorro" idea, including the "S" (for Spartacus) mark. As Western European ideology would have it (we're at the climax of American-Russian confrontation) before a revolutionary attitude became fashionable in Italo westerns, Randus fights for freedom (from slavery), not for redistribution of capital.

Gianna Maria Canale, leading actress of many a peplum since the earlier days (playing the title rôle in "Teodora", among others), is fine as Crassus' love interest. But Claudio Gora can give all he can as the terrible Crassus, right down to an exaggerated paranoid Nero-like figure.

It's worth while, anyway.