The Colossus of Rhodes / Il colosso di Rodi (Sergio Leone, 1961)

I got the beautiful German uncut DVD of Leone’s official directing debut. In fact he had already directed most (if not all) of The Last Days of Pompeji (1959), whichwas credited to Mario Bonnard. Leone got an extra big mentioning as 2nd unit director.

Both show not much, or more correct nothing of the things to come. If you hope to find some of the brilliance or the trademarks of FoD, search on another place (maybe in Sergio’s sand-box).

But when Pompeji is a simple Reader’s Digest version of Quo Vadis (by pruning down the melodramatic parts and having much more action scenes plus an added earthquake, despite a much shorter running time), Colossus is at least a solid peplum with still plenty of action and intrigues.

TCoR is probably more orientated on the US films than on their Italian counterparts with a non muscle man hero and a less trashy story. Leone’s directing is … well, assured on a minor level, but nothing really special. Several nice scenes, absolutely no brilliance.
Let’s say a 5/10

Corbucci’s Romulus and Remus and The Son of Spartacus are the better films. And the more enthusiastic looking films.

I have this release. The one drawback is the lack of English audio - I would love for someone to take the English audio from the cut US release and add it to this uncut release.

So, after years and years of waiting (and the disc at least being in the shelf for three years, yes for aging purposes, it’s like wine), I finally watched I Colosso di Rodo… on the German Bluray. It was of course boring as hell, but that’s the best idea I had for my last movie of the year. And yea, no English… but quality isn’t revolutionary anyway… and which idiot thought Rory Calhoun would make a good actor anyway

On a more positive note, it is of course rather ambitious and I liked the scenes where the rebels are among the rock formations we all know from Il Mercenario.

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Cinerama’s Seven Wonders Of The World has a good Colossus of Rhodes segment, I think. It stays consistent.

As for Calhoun, it was probably some Studio-head’s wife’s idea.

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