Fall of Rome (1963)

Original title: Il Crollo di Roma

Peplum. Italy. Starring Carl Möhner, Ida Galli, Andrea Aureli, Loredana Nusciak, Nando Tamberlani & Jim Dolen. Directed by Antonio Margheriti.

DVD: Odeon (Greece). English dubbed. Widescreen. Good quality.

Reasonable entertaining "meet and potatoes" peplum that gets the job without overachieving. Margheriti of course can't help to bring his modelkit along, and thank God for that! 3/5

Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)

Original title: Ercole al Centro della Terra

Peplum. Italy. Starring Reg Park, Christopher Lee, Leonora Ruffo, George Ardisson, Ida Galli, Rosalba Neri & Raf Baldassarre. Directed by Mario Bava & Franco Prosperi.

EVC (Holland). English dubbed. Letterboxed (slightly). By adjusting your TV settings you could get a pretty good widescreen.

Wonderful, trippy gothic-peplum! Bava demonstrates again his ability to create gold from nothing - this low budget film looks like a mega-budget epic and is hands down THE most visually imaginative peplas around. According to me and many others this is about as good as the genre gets! 5/5

Hercules in the Haunted World (1961)

Original title: Ercole al Centro della Terra

Peplum. Italy. Starring Reg Park, Christopher Lee, Leonora Ruffo, George Ardisson, Ida Galli, Rosalba Neri & Raf Baldassarre. Directed by Mario Bava & Franco Prosperi.

DVD: Fantoma (USA). English dubbed. Widescreen. Excellent quality!

Wonderful, trippy gothic-peplum! Bava demonstrates again his ability to create gold from nothing - this low budget film looks like a mega-budget epic and is hands down THE most visually imaginative peplas around. According to me and many others this is about as good as the genre gets! 5/5

Rome Against Rome (1964)

Original title: Roma contro Roma

Peplum. Italy. Starring John Drew Barrymore, Susy Andersen, Ettore Manni, Ida Galli & Philippe Hersent. Directed by Giuseppe Vari.

Jef Films (UK). English dubbed. Fullscreen. OK quality.

Very good peplum with lots of horror overtones. They even throw in an army of zombies! Deserves a better DVD than this (the image is pretty clear and the colors are good but the fullscreen was a downer. Also it's the shortened version. The shitheads at Jef Films strike again...). 4/5

Messalina (1960)

Original title: Messalina Venere Imperatrice

Peplum/Historical. Starring by Belinda Lee, Giulio Donnini, Arturo Dominici, Ida Galli & Giuliano Gemma. Directed by Vittorio Cottafavi.

DVD: E-M-S (Germany). English/german language options. Widescreen. Very good quality.

This 'risque' historical epic must have been considered pretty daring at its time, but today it feels very dated and tame. Not one of Cottafavi's best. 2/5