The Seven Magnificent Gladiators

My review was written in August 1985 after watching the movie on HBO.

"The Seven Magnificent Gladiators" is an uncredited (and subpar) remake of John Sturges' "The Magnificent Seven", itself a remake of "Seven Samurai". Action has been transplanted to ancient Rome in this quickie, made in 1982 as a warmup for Lou Ferrigno just prior to his starring in Cannon's "Hercules". Like "Hercules", the film set no box office fires when released regionally in August 1984. A third pic, "Hercules II", remains on the shelf.

Ferrigno toplines as Han, a barbarian who, after proving his prowess as a chariot racer, is asked by the women of the beleaguered village of Clusium to defend their town against the supposedly immortal demigod Nicerote (Dan Vadis), who annually descends upon them to exact a tribute and kill off any able-bodied men. Han passes the test as the only man able to wield the magical Sword of Achilles.

Accepting the assignment, Han teams up with a gladiator Scipio (Brad Harris), whom he bested in the chariot race, Scipio's pal Julia (Sybil Danning) and four other out-of-work warriors.

Plot twists and individual scenes are right out of the Yul Brynner-Steve McQueen classic, with Goliath (Ivan Beshears) introed chopping wood in a vignette identical to Charles Bronson's entrance in the original film and Giafiro (Michael Franz) going through a truncated version of Horst Buccholz' role. Main changes are the introduction of campy scenes in Rome of the emperor (Yehuda Efroni), including the anachronism of oiled-up women in bikinis wrestling for his entertainment. Also, instead of the strategy of defense in the original films, director Bruno Mattei stages two ho-hum swordplay battles. Only point of interest is Sybil Danning's femme warrior, convincingly integrating the previously all-male, he-man format.

Cast, though articulating in English, is sabotaged by poor dubbing and film develops very little period atmosphere.

This Italian made, Lou Ferrigno lead remake of Seven Samurai (1954) is the epitome of atrocious.

It tells the Seven Samurai story, tweaked with Gladiators instead of Samurai and instead of excellent it's ruddy awful.

Ferrigno may have been an outstanding human specimen but he was certainly no actor. Surrounded by people honestly not much better, with poor action sequences and an excessively simplified version of the original plot and this is a a travesty.

One for fans of bad films? No. Good films? No. Seven Samurai fans? No. Basically this is for, Ferrigno fans? And hardcore ones at that.

Yikes!

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

Cringe inducing acting

Cheesy score

The villians outfit, yikes!

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

The Hulk didn't do Ferrigno's physique justice

The problem with this movie is not that it rehashes the plot of "The Magnificent Seven"; after all, even that movie was a remake of something else ("The Seven Samurai", which I have not seen yet). The problem is that it rehashes it in a plodding and unimaginative fashion. The main difference between the two movies (besides the obviously lower production quality, of course) is that "The Magnificent Seven" were interesting, intelligent and articulate characters; "The Seven Magnificent Gladiators" are 5 primitive muscleheads, a rookie, and a warrior woman (Sybil Danning). The fight scenes are mostly Bud-Spencer-and-Terence-Hill-do-sword-and-sorcery-style. And being this a PG film, it completely lacks any of the blood and nudity usually found in the genre. A sensuous (but brief) female bikini wrestling match is as risqué, and as thrilling, as it gets here, folks (and no, Sybil is not featured in it). (**)

The mighty Lou Ferrigno stars in this swords & sandal take on Akira Kurosawa's classic The Seven Samurai, brought to us in this case by the ever maligned Bruno Mattei.

Big Lou's mission, along with his assembled warriors, is to defend a small village from the annual onslaught of a sadistic immortal and his cronies. To aid him in his task, Lou wields a magic sword, a sword in fact that only he can hold and formerly the trusted side arm of none other than Achilles - or so we're told.

Cue plenty of fairly enjoyable (if slightly handled) battles as our hero's fight for justice on behalf of the victimised community.

OK despite the title this is sadly most definitely NOT magnificent stuff, but it is nonetheless a harmless enough way to pass an hour and a half or so. Besides, how can any man really complain when none other than the gorgeous (and wonderfully buxom!) Sybil Danning is present?!

Not all of them can be winners, even Buñuel and Fernando de Fuentes had their own lower tier films, while this isn't exactly on the same level as La hija del engaño (1951) or something like that it's still a very tepid entry for Mattei, devoid of life and stimulating ideas, it never rises above being a slightly above average peplum/Conan rehash/parody. Mattei and Fragasso only made one of these after all.

Bruno, predictably, has zero interest in this story and directs a lot of the action sequences with laziness and carelessness, which sort of works considering the style of his oeuvre as in that the parodic elements and complete degradation of the genres and subjects he touches can easily flourish even on auto-pilot but this outing lacks compelling images, expressive touches and a cohesive sense of direction that typically unites all of the elements of a good film, things we usually find on Mattei films but not here, making it one of his least interesting ones.

The first person sequence with Sybil Danning and a couple of the delirious scenes kind of bring this one up a notch but the poor budget restricts much of it. With the classically mostly static camera, the kitschy outfits and the abundant wide shots that capture the fights, one can understand that it's totally a peplum send up, after all, it's on Italy's DNA regardless of whether or not they try to rip-off Conan. As its own peplum tribute/parody it works just fine even in its poor condition.