With Fire and Sword

Rating:
Summary: The only reference guide to "peplum" or sword & sandal films
Review: Lucanio's is the only book I know on the subject of the Italian "peplum" movies of the 1950s and 1960s, most starring athletic bodybuilders like Steve Reeves, Mark Forest, Reg Park, Kirk Morris, etc.

After a truly insightful and engaging article on plot and character archetypes -- both mythological and Jungian -- used in these films, comes the book's biggest section by far: an "Annotated Filmography" of peplum films 1958-1968, with full credits and detailed plot summaries. As exhaustive as this is, I could have used more annotations ... comments on the quality, good points and bad points, of individual films, rather than such lengthy (and repetetive) plot summaries.

Peplum precursors are covered, as are similar films made in the U.S. or in other countries.

While too much of the book may be taken up by plot summaries, this is the ONLY reference book on this popular and prolific movie genre, which fell out of fashion in the late sixties and gave way to the next big Italian film fad: spaghetti westerns.

Rating:
Summary: The only reference guide to "peplum" or sword & sandal films
Review: Lucanio's is the only book I know on the subject of the Italian "peplum" movies of the 1950s and 1960s, most starring athletic bodybuilders like Steve Reeves, Mark Forest, Reg Park, Kirk Morris, etc.

After a truly insightful and engaging article on plot and character archetypes -- both mythological and Jungian -- used in these films, comes the book's biggest section by far: an "Annotated Filmography" of peplum films 1958-1968, with full credits and detailed plot summaries. As exhaustive as this is, I could have used more annotations ... comments on the quality, good points and bad points, of individual films, rather than such lengthy (and repetetive) plot summaries.

Peplum precursors are covered, as are similar films made in the U.S. or in other countries.

While too much of the book may be taken up by plot summaries, this is the ONLY reference book on this popular and prolific movie genre, which fell out of fashion in the late sixties and gave way to the next big Italian film fad: spaghetti westerns.