AD 79 The Destruction of Herculaneum aka Anno79
Last Distruzione di Ercolano is a another Peplum Studios Italian/French co-production directed by Giancarlo Parolini 3 years after the earlier 1959 production of "The Last Days of Pompeii, starring Steve Reeves.
This time our hero, General Marcus Tiberius, is played by Brad Harris.
Marcus isn't just any Roman General. He's also the nephew of Emperor Titus Flavius.
After returning to Rome in triumph with his legion, including 4 very amusing Centurions, Marcus finds Rome in turmoil. More and more people are dying on the streets and the Christian community of Rome are being blamed by the more nefarious factions of the Senate. Marcus doesn't believe that the peaceful law-abiding Christians are to blame for what is going on in Rome. When he told by his uncle to use force against the Christians he disobeyed orders and was stripped of all of his titles and forced into exile.
The story then spends far too much time on the political ramifications in Rome caused by the situation with the Christians as well as the impact on Marius's exile on his four faithful centurion friends than on the situation with the volcano. Not only that. With the little time that is left. Our hero, when freed, must convince his uncle of the Christians innocence, join up with a band of very happy gladiators, and save the woman he loves, in a very short time.
The scenes of battle in this movie are limited, although there are two amusingly "violent" fight scenes when Marcus fights the "giant" Samson, (Djordjie Nenadovic.)
The interim fighting scenes seem to be more like something like "Spartacus," with a gladiator revolt taking place in Rome. The movie also shows the viewer gladiators actually having fun in scenes that turn a rather disappointing movie into a lot of fun.
The obligatory gladiator scene, normally seen in the arena suddenly moves to a lake supposedly filled with crocodiles. (You do get to see a big plastic one that doesn't even open its mouth.) This time the opposing gladiators are on rafts encircled by a ring of burning oil. I couldn't help but laugh when Marcus turned to the other gladiator on his raft and said he would rather face the danger of the crocodiles than the fire. The fire had only been less than a foot tall and was already going out. More could have been done with that scene but it was fun while it lasted since you barely take the matter seriously anyway.
The movie is 108 minutes long and Vesuvius only begins to rumble ten minutes ten minutes before it ends. Had it been a more modern movie the CGI special effects team would have had a field day playing with their "toys." Here the volcano starts to "awaken" on a beautiful sunny day. It begins to get cloudy and the wind begins to blow, then things finally begin to happen. Considering its age of the movie, the special effects aren't too bad. They did though, steal the scenes of destruction directly from Peplum's Pompeii movie and blatantly reuse them. What starts off as a volancanic eruption quickly begins to fizzle out and turns into an earthquake.
I watched 2 versions of this movie. The first: AD 79 The Destruction of Herculaneum, available on Amazon Prime is only is 78 minutes long and heavily edited. The second: La Distruzione di Ercolano is the full 108 minute version containing all of the "gory"scenes, such as all the killings, the earthquake swallowing those unfotunate people, and the strams of molten lava.
Why they cut the English version so much I do not know. All I can say is perhaps the violence was edited for kids daytime viewing and the time difference was to make it shorter in order to fit time schedules.
It's worth the watch though, even if it's just to see the raft scene.
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