| Sheba and the Gladiator | |
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 French film poster | |
| Directed by | |
| Screenplay by |
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| Story by |
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| Produced by | Enzo Merolle [1] |
| Starring | |
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| Edited by | Nino Baragli [1] |
| Music by | Angelo Francesco Lavagnino [1] |
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Release dates |
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Running time | 98 minutes [1] |
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Sheba and the Gladiator (Italian : Nel Segno di Roma) is a 1959 historical drama film loosely pertaining to the Palmyrene Empire and its re-annexation back into the Roman Empire.
Sheba the Gladiator was shot in 1958. [2] Director Guido Brignone fell ill during the production on the film leading to two other directors to enter the production to help complete it: Michelangelo Antonioni and Riccardo Freda. [3] For Antonioni, he visited Brignone in the hospital and reported on what he filmed and received instructions for the next day. [3] Freda was in charge shooting the battle scenes which he did with cinematographer Mario Bava and Antonioni working with cinematographer Luciano Trasatti shooting the indoor scenes. [3] Other people credited to the film included Sergio Leone as a screenwriter. [3]
Mimmo Palmara commented that Antonioni "couldn't care less" about the film and "didn't direct the actors." [2] Freda had an argument with Palmara and unsuccessfully tried to court Chelo Alonso on set. [2]
Sheba and the Gladiator was distributed in Italy on March 5, 1959. [1] [2] It was released in West Germany as Im Zeichen Roms on 2 October 1959. [4]
American International Pictures acquired the American rights to the film and re-titled it Sign of the Gladiator (Sign of Rome "was a pretty dismal title" according to Samuel Z. Arkoff [5] ) and cut 18 minutes from the original running time. [6] There was no gladiator in the film so they redubbed it to change the general played by Jacques Sernas into a gladiator. [5]
It was released in September 1959 in the United States. [2] American International Pictures added an end title song called "Xenobia" sung by Bill Lee which was released on AIP Records. [7] The film grossed a total of $1.25 million in rentals. [8] "We did quite well with the picture" said Samuel Z Arkoff. [5]
Kine Weekly called it a "money maker" at the British box office in 1960. [9]
American International Pictures (AIP) is an American motion picture production label of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In its original operating period, AIP was an independent film production and distribution company known for producing and releasing films from 1955 until 1980, a year after its acquisition by Filmways in 1979.
Sword-and-sandal, also known as peplum, is a subgenre of largely Italian-made historical, mythological, or biblical epics mostly set in the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Middle Ages. These films attempted to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics of the time, such as Samson and Delilah (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and Cleopatra (1963). These films dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965, eventually being replaced in 1965 by spaghetti Western and Eurospy films.
Samuel Zachary Arkoff was an American producer of B movies.
Mario Bava was an Italian filmmaker who worked variously as a director, cinematographer, special effects artist and screenwriter, frequently referred to as the "Master of Italian Horror" and the "Master of the Macabre". His low-budget genre films, known for their distinctive visual flair and stylish technical ingenuity, feature recurring themes and imagery concerning the conflict between illusion and reality, as well as the destructive capacity of human nature. He was a pioneer of Italian genre cinema, and is regarded as one of the most influential auteurs of the horror film genre.
Black Sunday is a 1960 Italian gothic horror film directed by Mario Bava in his official directorial debut, and starring Barbara Steele, John Richardson, Andrea Checchi, Ivo Garrani, Arturo Dominici and Enrico Oliveri. Loosely based on Nikolai Gogol's short story "Viy", the film takes place in Moldavia and tells the story of a witch who is put to death by her brother, only to return two centuries later to seek revenge upon his descendants.
Paul Konrad Müller was a Swiss actor who appeared mostly in Italian films. His motion picture acting career in Europe spanned a period of 51 years.
Hercules Unchained is a 1959 Italian-French epic fantasy feature film starring Steve Reeves and Sylva Koscina in a story about two warring brothers and Hercules' tribulations in the court of Queen Omphale. The film is the sequel to the Reeves vehicle Hercules (1958) and marks Reeves' second – and last – appearance as Hercules. The film's screenplay, loosely based upon various Greek mythology and plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles, was written by Ennio De Concini and Pietro Francisci with Francisci directing and Bruno Vailati and Ferruccio De Martino producing the film.
L'Eclisse is a 1962 Italian romance film written and directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and starring Alain Delon and Monica Vitti. Filmed on location in Rome and Verona, the story follows a young woman (Vitti) who pursues an affair with a confident young stockbroker (Delon). Antonioni attributed some of his inspiration for L'Eclisse to when he filmed a solar eclipse in Florence. The film is considered the last part of a trilogy and is preceded by L'Avventura (1960) and La Notte (1961).
I Vampiri is a 1957 Italian horror film. The film was directed by Riccardo Freda and completed by the film's cinematographer, Mario Bava. It stars Gianna Maria Canale, Carlo D'Angelo and Dario Michaelis. The film is about a series of murders on young women who are found with their blood drained. The newspapers report on a killer known as the Vampire, which prompts young journalist Pierre Lantin to research the crimes. Lantin investigates the mysterious Du Grand family who lives in a castle occupied by Gisele Du Grand who is in love with Lantin. She lives with her aunt, who hides her face in a veil, as well as the scientist Julian Du Grand, who is trying to find the secret to eternal youth.
Caltiki – The Immortal Monster is a 1959 black-and-white science fiction-horror film with similarities to The Blob that was released in the previous year. The film's storyline concerns a team of archaeologists investigating Mayan ruins, who come across a creature that is a shapeless, amorphous blob. They manage to defeat it using fire, while keeping a sample of the creature. Meanwhile, a comet, which previously passed near the Earth around the time of the collapse of the Mayan civilization, is due to return, raising the possibility of a connection between the creature and the comet.
The Unnaturals is a gothic horror film directed and written by Antonio Margheriti. It is loosely based on Dino Buzzati's short story "Eppure bussano alla porta" from the collection The Seven Messengers. The film is an Italian and West German co-production between Super International Pictures S.l.P, Edo Cinematografica, and CCC Filmkunst GmbH.
Chelo Alonso was a Cuban actress who became a star in Italian cinema, and ultimately a 1960s cult film heroine and sex symbol in the U.S. She was well known for playing femmes fatales with fiery tempers and sensual dance scenes.
Goliath and the Barbarians is a 1959 Italian peplum film loosely based on events of the Lombard invasion of Italy in AD 568. As with many Italian peplums of the time, the English dubbed version renamed some of the characters.
Domenico "Mimmo" Palmara was an Italian actor.
See Naples and Die is a 1952 Italian crime-melodrama film directed by Riccardo Freda.
Sins of Rome is a 1953 historical drama film directed by Riccardo Freda and loosely based on the life story of Spartacus. The rights of film's negatives and copies were bought by the producers of Stanley Kubrick's 1960 film Spartacus, as to prevent eventual new releases of the film that could have damaged the commercial outcome of Kubrick’s film; this resulted in Sins of Rome's withdrawal from market for about thirty years.
Luigi Carpentieri (1920-1987) was an Italian assistant director (1940-1949) and film producer (1947-1968). Together with Ermanno Donati, he founded the production company "Athena Cinematografica", which in 1960 became "Panda Cinematografica". All films produced by [[the company were genre films.
The Son of Black Eagle is a 1968 Italian historical adventure film directed by Guido Malatesta and starring Mimmo Palmara, Edwige Fenech and Franco Ressel. It was inspired by the historic success of Riccardo Freda's Black Eagle and Revenge of Black Eagle.
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