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In "Airplane," when Captain Oveur asks young Joey, "Do you like gladiator movies?" he is slyly and salaciously referring to films like "The Colossus of Rhodes." While technically not a gladiator movie, Sergio Leone's directorial debut is rife with scantily clad men whose rippling muscles and impeccable abs are fully exposed while they wrestle with each other or undergo whippings, torture, and bondage. The national pastime of Rhodes must have been doing crunches and lifting weights, because even the mature men have flat tight stomachs and bulging biceps. Meanwhile, the women, while lovely of face, remain chastely clothed and relegated to the sidelines. The homo-erotic visuals of this tale of ancient Rhodes call into question the film's intended audience. Were there enough closeted gays in the early 1960's to make a success of mediocre movies such as this?

Despite some good action sequences that hint at Leone's directorial talents, the film's dialog is stilted, the special effects dated, and the performances generally wooden. In desperate need of judicious editing, the film drags on far too long, and the plot sags in the middle. American actor, Rory Calhoun, a fading western hero who was obviously hired only for his name, wanders through the proceedings like a stranger in a strange land in more ways than one. Portraying the Greek Darios as an American on holiday, Calhoun remains nonplussed in the face of death, torture, and the lures of beautiful women. Decidedly less buff than his Italian counterparts, Calhoun nevertheless overwhelms men whose physical strength obviously exceeds that of his own lean build. Perhaps his attire gave him self-confidence. The stylish mini-togas with colorful scarves thrown over one shoulder and white, laced boots to the mid-calf make Calhoun resemble Captain Marvel more than an ancient warrior.

When viewers tire of Calhoun's costume changes and the sight of bare male flesh, they can amuse themselves watching the actors' mouths move without once matching the words that they supposedly utter. In the scenes between Calhoun and Lea Massari as Diala, there is little doubt that neither performer knows what the other is saying. Calhoun recites his lines in English while Massari recites hers in Italian, which was later ineptly dubbed. However, even Italian sandal epics can be entertaining, and "Colossus" is no exception. If expectations are kept low or the viewer is an undying fan of Rory Calhoun, then "Colossus" provides some camp moments and decent action in addition to its legions of male Italian bodies.

After dieing Alexander the Great , his empire was split itself originating some independent kingdoms ruled by descendants of the Alexander's generals, this one was called the Hellenistic time. In fact , this is one of the few films to be set in the Hellenic period that spanned the period from the death of Alexander the Great to the rise of Rome as a world power . It's set in 280 B.C , the starring is Dario (a likable Rory Calhoun , though the original choice for the role of Darios was John Derek) an Athenian on holidays living in Rodi with his uncle Lisipo (Jorge Rigaud) . There he meets a good girl (Mabel Karr, wife to Fernando Rey, starring in The last days of Pompeii) and a bad girl (a gorgeous Lea Massari) . A tyrant (Roberto Camardiel) and his hoodlum (Conrado San Martin) govern tyrannically the town . But rebels led by Peliocles (Georges Marchal) fight against the nasty rulers . Meanwhile, a Phoenician army attempts to attack Rodi . Dario trying to clean up the doomed Rodhes town from enemies and a foreign invasion .

Some years before conducting a master class on the art of widescreen composition in The good , the bad and the ugly , Sergio Leone directed his credited directorial debut , though he had previously stepped in to finish most of The Last Days Of Pompeii when the original director fell ill, with this equally epic sword and sandal film starring American cowboy actor Rory Calhoun. Ample cast formed by American Rory Calhoun and familiar faces as Spanish as Italian actors ; Rory was in Italy for the title role in MGM's Marco Polo (1962), stepped into the lead role of "Colossus" on only one day's notice . Roy is solid and sympathetic though uninspired in the lead role as a honest adventurer caught up in the prior momentous to earthquake that threatens noblemen and slaves alike , but acting honors go to the villains played by Roberto Camardiel and Conrado San Martin . It's an European co-production by Spain/Italy/France with several actors from various countries , the screenplay was reportedly the work of nine screenwriters and filmed in lavish Budget . Leone's dynamic framing of the towering statue at the center of the film combined with the frenetic action scenes set on top of it made sure the Saturday matinée crowd stayed glued to their seats for the film's excessive 128 min. running time . This historical epic about the Hellenistic time bears no relation whatsoever to real events and much of the dialog is of the wooden variety . In fact some scenarios contain abundant anachronism such as 'the Garden of the Granja of Segovia' built in XVIII century . The highlights are the images of the Colosso , one of the marvels of the world . The real Colossus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was 32 meters high and stood on a hill , the cinematic version stands 110 meters and its legs bestride the harbor . In the pier of Laredo (Cantabria, Spain) was built feet , and head and shoulders were made in ordinary size and a maquette reflecting its whole splendor . Some spectacular scenes including the explosive climax when ground shaking and the town blows its top .

Colorful cinematography by Antonio Ballesteros , the widescreen process used is TotalScope, an Italian version of Cinemascope and evocative musical score by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino . The film bears remarkable resemblance to 'Last days of Pompeii' by Mario Bonnard and Sergio Leone, such as the earthquake in which numerous images are taken , repeat several actors actors as Mimmo Palmara , Carlo Tamberlani, and of course, technicians, producers, writers : Ennio De Concini, Duccio Tessari, same cameraman : Antonio L. Ballesteros and assistant direction, Jorge Grau, among others . The motion picture was professionally directed by Sergio Leone . Although he had experience directing other films, this was the first to give full on-screen credit to Sergio .

Now that this film is at last available on DVD (having never been issued on tape or laserdisc), more people will get a chance to see it and hopefully it will be better appreciated. Until now, the only way to see it was to wait for it to show up on TCM, which happened once or twice.

While this is Sergio Leone's first credited film as a director, you won't see the hallmarks of the distinctive Leone style. He's working here more as a director for hire, just as Stanley Kubrick had done the year before with "Spartacus." Rory Calhoun is woefully out of place, his hairstyle wildly anachronistic (full of that greasy kid stuff), he grins idiotically at inappropriate moments and gives his inane dialogue all the gusto it deserves. The story is fairly straightforward, although refreshingly free of the ersatz piety that infects so many epic Hollywood films of the era. There's a lip-smacking taste for brutality, as some of the heroes are fiendishly tortured; this appears to have been a hallmark of Italian epics of the time.

Where this movie works --- and it does --- is in the spectacle itself. You might not think that set decoration, production design, costumes, and cinematography can carry a picture, but in this case these elements are so well done it more than offsets Calhoun's dorky performance and the weaknesses of the plot. Bear in mind when you watch this that Leone did not have a computer to work with. Everything that you see had to be built or painted, and it's remarkably effective.

The film is perhaps a bit overlong, but the story has enough energy to carry the action sequences and bring all those incredible sets to life. The supporting cast is good enough to make up for Calhoun, although the dubbing is poorly done.

It's not as sophisticated as "Spartacus", but it's certainly more effective than, say, "Clash of the Titans." If you like sword-and-sandal films, this one is well worth your time.

Notable now mainly as an early work by Sergio Leone, this ambitious entry in the sword-and-sandal genre has the kind of long, detailed story-line rarely seen in productions of this sort, and it's unencumbered by the religious "piety" which clings to, say, "The Revolt of the Slaves." If anything, "Colossus" may be a tad too ambitious, since the second half of its two-hours-plus running time could use a bit of trimming.

Worth noting are the scenes involving the head of the giant statue which is of hollow construction. Watching Rory Calhoun climbing out the ear of the statue and then engaging in a sword fight on the statue's shoulder is one of those moments for which movies were invented. (Yes, I said Rory Calhoun, and he's as out of place here as you might imagine. Stephen Boyd or John Derek, Leone's original choice, would have done better jobs.)

Also worth noting is the movie's apparent motto of: "Shirts off, chains on." Rarely have so many muscular men been subjected to such a variety of bondage and torture, beginning with the pre-title sequence in which a bare-chested, spreadeagled Georges Marchal, (who was born for this kind of role,) is rescued from a prison-camp. Later, he's placed inside a metal bell which is repeatedly struck with a hammer while two of his colleagues -- stretched out on horizontal slabs -- have caustic fluids dripped onto their bare torsos. And then there are the prisoners in the arena who are dragged behind chariots or suspended by their wrists over a lion-pit. (About the only other movie which has such a high quotient of men writhing in pain in MGM's 1954 "Prisoner of War.")

Today's special effects could make the Colossus and its eventual fate even more impressive, but alas, movies such as this just aren't made anymore.

Leone served his apprenticeship in film by assisting various Italian directors as well as Walsh, Wyler and Melvyn Le Roy… By the late '50s he was writing scripts for gladiatorial epics, the genre in which he first gained directing experience, and took over "The Last Days of Pompeii" when the director Mario Bonnard fell ill before directing alone "The Colossus of Rhodes." Not until 1964, however, did he establish himself as a true original with his first film in what would come to be known as the Man With No Name trilogy…

"The Colossus of Rhodes" begins in the island of Rhodes in the Mediterranean Sea 280 B.C.

Rhodes is celebrating a proud day in her history… A magnificent statue will now dominate the seas… But the Colossus was erected in blood and the people in Rhodes do not want slavery… The chief of the rebels, Peliocles (Georges Marchal) needs a man like that visitor Dario (Rory Calhoun), who's a great warrior in Greece…

Thar (Conrado San Martín)—who is in love with Diala (Lia Massari)—is no longer content with the power Serse (Roberto Camardiel) stupidly bestowed upon him… He wants this beautiful island to sell to Phoenicia, than he'll be the reigning monarch… Of course the rebels don't have enough men to attack them openly…

There's only one plan, to enter the Colossus… But the Colossus is impregnable…How could they hope to get in? Rhodes' best soldiers are imprisoned underground… A heavy gate seals the only exit… This gate can only be opened by a control in the Colossus…

If you want to see how the Colossus is a huge trap don't miss this Sergio Leone's directorial debut

Technically master director Sergio Leone's debut, The Colossus of Rhodes wasn't his first foray into swords-and-sandals epics. He was famously the second unit director for Ben-Hur and had to take over the reigns himself for The Last Days of Pompeii. Although he's known now for his Westerns, he certainly had a little niche going at the start. Unfortunately, there's fundamental flaws with that niche and it just doesn't hold up to today. Bland characters, bland story. It takes itself too seriously and ends up overly camp. It wants to have a camaraderie about war but it comes off awkward and childish ending with meaningless conflict and catastrophe. It's an interesting film and relatively watchable but it's terribly dated. While it has the pace of his subsequent films, it has none of the grit or tension. The most disappointing aspect is that the photography is incredibly flat. While the frames take a massive expanse for a debut, there's no depth and the sets are just obvious. Well, at least he got better.

5/10

...there was the movie that probably should not have been. It's not THAT bad, it's just surprising to see the director is Sergio Leone. But we all have to start somewhere don't we? And Leone started with this sword-and-sandals epic.

In the year 280 BC, Rhodes is a rich and powerful seaport island nation. King Serse (Roberto Camardiel) has just unveiled the Colossus, a massive metal statue of the god Apollo that stands over the port entrance. Greek hero Dario (Rory Calhoun) is in town for the festivities when he's approached by Peliocles (Georges Marchal) to join in a slave uprising against the Rhodesian oppressors. Dario is reluctant until he learns that the Phoenicians are plotting to overthrow the king and take the city's treasures.

This handsome production strives more for Ben-Hur or Spartacus style epic grandeur than Hercules Unchained B-movie pablum. Calhoun is a very dubious casting choice as the hero, and the French star Marchal is a more suitable lead. The costumes are nice and colorful, and the sets are very impressive, especially the Temple of Baal. At 127 minutes, this goes on about a half hour too long. However, there are some good action scenes, including an extended gladiator arena sequence. Unfortunately, a guy in a gorilla suit glimpsed briefly near the beginning never returns. This was the first credited directing job from spaghetti western maestro Sergio Leone, but his skill was not readily evident from this effort. Still, there's enough spectacle to keep this from being a complete waste of time.

Warner Brothers actually restored this and put this one on DVD, with commentary even. And yet they never got around to doing the same for Showboat. The speed in technology changes - DVD to Blu, physical to streaming, and throw in the Great Recession of 2008, and you see what seems like some strange choices by the studios. This one is often on Turner Classic Movies since Warner Bros. owns the rights. It is probably worth a watch for the novelty of it all.

Legendary Italian director Sergio Leone intentionally gave himself a long apprenticeship, working as assistant or second unit director on numerous projects throughout the fifties, including William Wyler's version of Ben Hur. He wanted to pick up as much experience as he could before beginning his own projects. The films he eventually made became renowned, particularly his westerns. But in between his apprenticeship and beginning the Dollars Trilogy he made this little-known and little-seen sword-and-sandal adventure, his first time in the director's chair.

Colossus of Rhodes is one of a vast number of peplums that were being produced in Italy in the early 1960s. Just as the boom of ancient world epics (Quo Vadis, Ben Hur, Spartacus etc) was losing momentum in Hollywood a new rush of low-budget copycats was appearing in Europe. Terribly scripted, terribly acted cheap and nasty affairs, they have largely been forgotten. Colossus of Rhodes is an exception mainly due to the later fame of its director. However Leone fans hoping to discover an example of his fledgling genius will probably be disappointed.

On the face of it, this does not look like a typical Leone picture. But then of course it is a very different genre to the westerns that form the bulk of his career, with a different look and a different scope. And while there are no gritty close-ups and no sweeping landscape shots, there are one or two moments that definitely smack of Leone's style. Perhaps the strongest of these is around ten-minutes into the film, when a would-be assassin has his bluff called by the villain. We see rapidly edited shots of all the characters involved staring at each other, while the background music blares and the tension mounts. This is clearly a forerunner to the long-drawn out standoffs that began with Fistful of Dollars. Another moment which stands out comes as we head to the finale, and we see a lone dog trotting across a deserted street. Here and there too there is the occasional little touch of class that proves this wasn't just any run-of-the-mill b-picture director at work here. There is a certain neatness to the shot composition and a grace to the timing of movement.

There are some pretty good action scenes too, mostly of the sword fighting variety. In look these owe more to the Errol Flynn swashbucklers directed by Michael Curtiz than anything else, and are really not bad at all. It's a shame in some ways that Leone never really got to do this kind of action scene again, since from here on it would all be guns. One thing that does strike me – you can really tell Leone was getting ready to direct a western. There is a whole subplot which involves plenty of horse-riding through rugged terrain, the look of which was replicated almost shot-for-shot in certain scenes in Fistful of Dollars.

Aside from the direction, Colossus of Rhodes suffers from all the hallmarks of a cheap European production – lousy screenplay, bad dubbing, and some really cringeworthy overacting. Thankfully Rory Calhoun is pretty good in the lead role even if this is an unusual part for him. He cheerfully smirks his way through the performance, and the credit probably goes to him for creating a very likable hero. The only other treat on the acting side of things is Roberto Carmardiel (playing King Serse) a noteworthy Spanish character actor who possesses perhaps the creepiest smile and the beadiest eyes in cinema.

Perhaps the biggest weakness in this picture is the screenplay. The dialogue is a kind of lifeless hand-me-down from corny 50's Hollywood epics. Someone seems to have told the screenwriter he'd get a raise every time he gave Rory Calhoun the line "So this is the island of peace?", since he says it about twenty times. The overall story is moderately engaging, with a few good if predictable twists and turns, but the actual specifics of the narrative are pathetic. Time and again one of the good guys will get into trouble only to be saved by the most uninspired, improbable last-minute heroics, to the point where the villains are unbelievable because they just look like absolute pushovers.

It's interesting though that, just as the Italians would create westerns free from rosy moralism a few years later, this Italian-made sword-and-sandal flick also seems to have dispensed with most of the kind of sickly nobleness that plagued the US epics of the 1950s. While retaining the popular slave revolt theme, the rebel characters do seem a lot more genuine than any patronising Charlton Heston character, despite the deficit in acting talent.

For Leone fans it's a bit difficult to know how to class Colossus of Rhodes. Many don't even properly count it as one of his films. Presumably either he took the project on as a kind of dummy run of directing before going onto more personal projects or it was simply a studio job he had little control over - in all likelihood a combination of the two. When all's said and done though, it might not be good, but it's not terrible. So long as you don't get your hopes up too high, it's a watchable two hours.

"The Colossus of Rhodes" is one more of the 50's and early 60's sword and sandals fever and it doesn't add much to the genre.

I accept some scenery and settings are acceptable (the big statue is one of them) and also the plot if you are not very demanding. But that's about all.

Rory Calhoun looks like an alien in his role as the Greek hero and doesn't fit at all there (his hairdo is unthinkable in ancient Greece). The rest of the cast is definitely standard or poor. The action scenes are nothing new and the special effects are just correct.

But perhaps the main flaw of the picture is its unbearable duration (more than two hours); but this is a usual bad habit of director Sergio Leone who went on to better products in the western genre also demerited by a clear and unnecessary overrun that he couldn't seem to avoid.

"The Colossus of Rhodes" is just for peplum fans and very patient ones too.

I suspect it's curiosity that brought most of us reviewers to "The Colossus of Rhodes", an Italian swords-and-sandals blockbuster set in the Greek antique world and whose most prestigious name on the credits belongs to the director, Sergio Leone. His thunder isn't even stolen by his no-less legendary partner in film: the late Maestro Ennio Morricone. I confess it, if it wasn't for the film's reputation as the first directed movie from Sergio Leone, chances are it wouldn't have made it even in my Top 500 to-watch list.

And so like many fans, I was wondering how the film looked, how the hyperbolic style of Leone and his infatuation with detached and outcast characters would translate into a peplum? Yes, the film about one of the wonders of the Antique world started with a personal wonder. And so, maybe distracted by years of impregnation with Leone style, I kept looking at the film like an oddity, a canvas where I could spot here and there one or two trademarks from the Maestro. And I was so focused on that that I perhaps forgot to watch the film.

The distraction was so grand that I don't even feel entitled to review the film properly. I guess what I can say is that there is something in Rory Calhoun's impersonation of the Greek Darios that emerged from the usual heroic archetypes, here's a womanizer who gets itself caught in several plots converging toward the same goal, which is the destruction of the local tyrants. A Clint Eastwood he ain't but there is something in this colorful mosaic of talking and fighting and courting scenes that can't allow such characters to express themselves. As I noticed after watching "The Robe", peplums are movies designed for the spectacular and the epic, and it is a credit to the better ones to allow personalities to emerge.

Leone who was no stranger to that genre as he assisted Wyler in "Ben-Hur" and took part to the "Last Days of Pompei" had the instinct for such movies and "Colossus" features some remarkable sequences and set-designs, starting with the recreation of the big statue but something was missing. Leone's camera work has always been known to turn even the ugliest or most remote locations into subjects of eye-catching quality such as Goya paintings, his films portrayed the least appealing matters with great operatic lyricism, a capability to transcend the lowest instincts of humanity and turn them into things of epic aesthetic scales rather than morales. The Dollars trilogy was about greed or manipulation, ugly traits, the "Once Upon" trilogy about people incapable to cope with their time and also betrayal.

Great movies can be defined into simpler words and the simpler they are, the more they allow their directors to fully express their talent. "Colossus of Rhodes" has such a convoluted plot and historical mishmach doubled with the usual devotion to heroism as a value that it's remotely impossible to come up with anything fresh and new. At least, "Ben-Hur" had a universal story to tell, both "Spartacus" and "Quo Vadis" had Peter Ustinov. "Colossus of Rhodes" lacks colorful characters that could have humanized it. It's spectacular all right, the earthquake sequence is nothing short but brilliant but the film strikes as big chunk of antic splendor displayed only as a feast to the eyes, a "movie with gladiators" like another reviewer point it out, mentioning the infamous line from "Airplane!".

I don't feel like going further, this review isn't the highlight of my work either, but "Colossus" is more of a film you 'check' rather than watch, I checked so I could say that I saw all Leone's movies, Leone resurrected the Western genre and found the true arena of his colossal talent there and it had to to go through that step, one little step before the giant leap. Anyway, it was an Interesting watch, but legacy-wise, closer to the 'Manneken-pis' than the Colossus...

It lasted and lasted and it seemed it would never end. Now it's past midnight and I have no nerves to stay up till morning writing about Leone's directorial debut. He was second unit director for "Ben-Hur" and I suppose it gave him the idea to make pale copy of Hollywood's historical spectacles. It isn't catastrophe, it's watchable, and for hard core fans of historical spectacles it might be even enjoyable, but objectively, this is pretty pathetic movie.

5/10

Word was that director Sergio Leone who stepped in during 1959 and took over directing "The Last Days of Pompeii" with Steve (Mr. Hercules, himself) Reeves wanted to make a sword and sandal film...at that time Italy was churning out the musclebulgers by the dozens.....Steve Reeves with that physique carved from granite was the king of these musclebulgers.....and to a lesser degree by another musclebulger named Mark Forrest. Leone employed all the members of "Last Days of Pompeii" he could hire....the one exception was he wanted Steve Reeves with that bulging physique to star but Reeves was committed to making "The Giant of Marathon" and "The Great White Warrior" and was not available.....How did I get this info??? I knew a friend of Reeves who talked to him and how Leone liked him and offered him the role in Colossus...... Rumor was a rather handsome but undernourished John Derek was the choice for Dario in the lead role...but a feud developed between Leone and Calhoun who was making another costume "epic" nearby in Italy was suddenly available. Calhoun had made his reputation during the 50s making westerns and was hired......anyhow, story is a typical Italian sword and sandal epic of evil rulers, mob scenes, tortures with whips and chains and a few lovely women to look at.....main story line concerns a giant erected statue called the Colossus which stands over the entrance of the harbor to the island of Rhodes in 280 BC. The Colossus drops oodles of fire and brimstone from it's bottom on any invading ships and invaders who try and enter unwelcome...... Calhoun in leading role as Dario looks out of place....he has that greased up hair do from the 50s he wore and those white shiny boot sandals he had on...ugh!!!! Lea Massari his off and on again love interest is very wooden with a large skin blemish right in the middle of her forehead!!! Where was the make up department????? Massari has all the charm of a wooden box and little to no sex appeal.....in most sword and sandal movies the women are skimpily dressed to the extreme to attract the male audience.....in Colossus the women are covered with full length togas and long dresses....go figure.....Mylene Demengeot who co starred with Steve Reeves in "Giant of Marathon" would have been a better female leading lady for this film....anyhow....there are still legions of sword and sandal fans out there who remembers all those gladiator films....the genre was resuscitated briefly in Russell Crowe's 2000 film "Gladiator".....word was the director wanted Steve Reeves to come out of retirement and play a role but Reeves was in declining health at the time and could not commit....so sad to see the king of these S&S films decline the role......only real criticism is this film is about 20 minutes or so too long coming in at 2 hrs and 15 minutes.......still not bad to see for sword and sandal fans.

Sergio Leone's first (credited) directorial effort. I'm not all that familiar with the peplum (or "swords and sandals") genre. This may be one of the better ones. Nothing stands out as particularly awful, there are some good action sequences, and it's interesting food for thought to read the Colossus itself as an atomic bomb analogy. I didn't hate watching it. But I didn't really enjoy it much either. The plot moves in fits and starts and doesn't really get cooking until the third act, which eventually becomes this weird deus ex machina clusterf*ck. The performances weren't as hammy as I expected, but they are rather wooden. For every engaging fight there's another that seems to drag on and on, and for every impressive set piece there's another that looks kinda cheap. And the whole thing just feels done by rote, soulless and humorless. Although I think a skilled editor could make a pretty good picture out of this, it would still lack passion. Mildly entertaining, but nowhere near the heights of the "Dollars" trilogy.

The Colossus Of Rhodes casts American expatriate actor Rory Calhoun as an Athenian warrior visiting Rhodes for a bit of R and R from the wars back on the Greek mainland. But no sooner does he get there than he's hip deep in Rhodesian politics with two factions trying to overthrow King Roberto Camardiel. One are the freedom fighters led by Georges Marechal with whom Calhoun throws his lot with. The other is a group led by prime minister Conrado San Martin who has smuggled in Phoenician soldiers in the guise of slaves and he's got them hidden in the city catacombs awaiting a propitious moment to strike.

The king is having some good reason to celebrate what he thinks is the apex of his regime symbolized by the construction of what became known as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The Colossus Of Rhodes is this statue of Apollo astride the entrance of the harbor and like the arch in St. Louis is hollow. Unlike the arch it's also a weapon of war keeping folks in and out of the harbor at the bidding of who controls the Colossus.

In actuality the Colossus was not hollow it was a statue and most likely did not set astride the harbor entrance. If it had been when the earthquake that destroyed it after about one hundred years it would have fallen in the harbor and blocked it for years. It was quite the engineering feat whether it was the real colossus or the special effects in this film.

Sergio Leone made his directorial debut and this was before he started doing the spaghetti westerns for which he became famous. As a Peplum film, The Colossus Of Rhodes is above the average. I remember seeing it in theaters back in 1961 and it was quite the marvel back then for a 14 year old.

Enjoyed this film which was filmed entirely in Cantabria, Spain with a large cast of performers and great photography and plenty of action scenes. This story deals with a Greek war hero who decides to visit the Rhodes Kingdom who have built a huge statue of bronze and stone twenty stories tall in their harbor. Darios, (Rory Calhoun) meets up with a very attractive woman named Diala, (Lea Massari) who enjoys teasing him when he tries to make love to her and she drags him into some very dangerous situations. There is plenty of arrows flying through the air, hot molten lead dropped on people and many secret passages along with plenty of torture chambers and lots of blood and gore. This film runs rather long and it eventually gets rather boring at times, but it is a great film to watch on a dull weekend. Rory Calhoun gave a great performance and I still remember when he appeared in a film called, "The Red House" starring Edward G. Robinston, Judith Anderson, Julie London.

I give 4/10 stars for the overall visual effects and the hokum-quotient. Much of this 1961 film is eminently forgettable. Yes, you can see a few of Leone's trademarks in an early format, but the film has nothing much going for it.

It seems to take its lead, in some respects, from the great 'Spartacus' of the previous year; the Holywood film is, of course, much better and has finer actors and a coherent plot. It uses a great deal of dramatic licence (its Gracchus character is an invention, using the name of a political reformer of 60 years before).

'Colossus' appears to assume no historical knowledge at all in its audiences: the sets, attitudes, weapons and names are a mishmash of everything from Greek to Persian to Roman. The history of Rhodes (in reality an important, if second-line power in the 3rd c. BC and a democracy) is hopelessly and comically garbled. The 'Phoenicians', a great trading people four centuries earlier, are brought in as the stock 'Eastern' villains and there is a touch of racism in the resulting ethnic clash.

One could hardly believe Leone directed this thrilling film about ancient pagans, swords and sandals. It has everything that Leone later couldn't give, until "Once Upon a Time In America".

The only thing recognizable with Leone is the far fetched story line and ridiculous History. In the Leone world, humans are extinct, because every man kills every other man, woman, and child.

Here, at least the men aren't killing beautiful young women, so maybe the human race won't be extinct.

Those who have seen Leone's spaghetti disasters will be pleasantly surprised by the excitement and spectacle here, and also by the more complex characters in this work. These are not the one dimensional cardboard caricatures of Leone westerns. The characters are two and three dimensional.

And that's what makes this so much better than anything Leone ever did. For some reason, he directed with a contrived hatred in later works. One must admit that his westerns made no sense, because the characters had no motivation. They just killed everything in sight.

Here, we have a lead character who is an authentic anti hero, instead of the fake anti hero that the crack heads of the sixties and seventies tried to force down our throats.

Rory Calhoun does a great job in emulating a Victor Mature playboy character. He has faults, and is a reluctant hero, but he's not the rich brat's hate mongering psychopath that Eastwood portrayed. No, this is a more three dimensional character, and that's why we can care about him and the story.

He's aided by a great comic relief character in his uncle, who at first glance doesn't seem to be used enough, but the film looks like a lot had to be cut. In fact, the final half hour looks very rushed. There is some confusion in the plot as to what the "Colossus of Rhodes" does. It opens prison doors for bad guys, or for good guys? It spills fatal molten lead that can wipe out fleets, or does it just cover a few guys with burns? These are minor faults, because this is not a film for "fact finders". It is a film for fun. A good adventure film is "credible characters in incredible circumstances". That's what we get here.

If one looks for a Leone trademark, one can see it in his philosophy of appeasing the rich kid who never leaves his cubicle. Leone's world is the old pagan world of Homer, a Republican propaganda machine, where some men are gods, some are demigods, and some are cannon fodder. This is the myth that the elite need to keep the "cannon fodder" in check. One sees it here. Only a god can kill another god. Only a demigod or god can kill a demigod. We see a trickle of that here. In his spaghetti westerns, he shoves it in our faces.

It's hard to believe that a director can sink to such depths, from a great work like this, to making every possible mistake one can make. It's a difference of directing with style, such as here, or directing with pure hate. For those who didn't live in the sixties and seventies, it is hard to understand, but that was the era of "hate", when complete psychopaths decided that movies were supposed to be depressing and hateful, to make people want to commit suicide. And this hate was fostered by the equally psychotic movie critics.

Make no mistake, that the control freaks who praise Leone's control freak westerns probably won't like a film this good, but also make no mistake that those control freaks have a short shelf life. In 50 years, they will be gone, or brain dead, or silly sounding invalids no one understands, and the spaghetti garbage will be forgotten and seen for the crap it was, while this will be heralded as Leone's true masterpiece.

It was one of my cheesy pleasures in my youth to watch all those Italian (and Spanish) "historical" adventure movies on TV. The quality of those movies ranges from solid to cringe-worthy (but mostly the good kind of cringe) - they are in their best moments like those stories in the pulp magazines of gone times (that nobody admitted to buy and read). Anyway, The Colossus of Rhodus is a solid contribution to those kind of works but only in a very few moments we get a little inkling of the kind of epic movies the director of this piece will direct only a few years later. Cheesy, funny, entertaining.

"Dario" (Rory Calhoun) is a travelling Athenian having some time off on the beautiful island of Rhodes. He's a bit of a military hero so is fêted by his new hosts who on the other hand have quite a lucrative slave-trading business going on with their Phoenician friends. What "Dario" soon learns, though, is that there is a plan afoot to topple "King Serse" (Roberto Camardiel) and use the mighty statue that guards their harbour mouth to ruthless effect if anyone anyone tries to interfere with their ambitions to rule the island and trade in even more lost souls. Mired in these conspiracies is "Diala" (Lea Massari) to whom our visitor takes a bit of a shine - but is she all that she seems? I like the genre and this production has seen some effort go into the costumes and visual effects - especially around the huge bronze statue and it's menacing payload. Snag? Well there's just far too much dialogue, nowhere near enough action - and it's long. It does drag at times, especially in the middle with the cat and mouse romance cluttering up what adventure elements there are. Calhoun was only ever really a decent looking, competent, actor - and here offers little more as we plod along to the historically established denouement. Conrado San Martín's "Tireo" makes for a passable baddie, though, and all-in-all I did quite enjoy it.