By 1960 director Riccardo Freda's notable talent was definitely in decline, although his Euro-horror films of the time are considered classics: Danza Macabra, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock. He can't have been happy doing a sword and sandal epic like this one, where one of Jason's crew is none other than Orpheus (Massimo Girotti, star of the co-feature on this double bill), boring us with the story of how he lost Eurydice on the way back from the underworld.

Somewhere along the line the story of Jason has been conflated with that of Odysseus. The Argo has a female stowaway. The crew fights a Cyclopean ape monster and deals with a sorceress who turns men into sheep. Add some villainous intrigues, dancing girls in burlesque outfits, and you've got what the Italians called a peplum, a name derived from those little pleated skirts worn by Greek and Roman soldiers.

Hero Roland Carey appears in a number of European thrillers but more information about him is hard to come by. He's more athletic than many of the beefier musclemen like Dan Vadis or Reg Park. Ziva Rodann is less effective but like everyone suffers from bad dubbing. Less successful is Nadine Duca's Queen Gaia, the ugly witch transformed into a raving beauty. She can't read a line without first turning to the camera and flashing a giant Dinah Shore smile.

It's unfair to judge these Italo pepla based on the English versions. In addition to the dubbing wiping away the original language, the grainy images and bad color obscure their original glossy appearance. Pan-scanning a Techniscope frame results in hardly more image area than a 16mm frame. Both of these features also appear to have had a reel or so trimmed from their original versions, although in this case continuity doesn't seem to have been affected .. it's still pretty slow. Some of the effects aren't so bad, especially when Jason climbs a giant statue to steal the Golden Fleece.

Carlo Rustichelli's score is grand and expressive, sounding cheap only when a Wurlitzer-style organ substitutes for a string section.

The second half of this VCI double-bill was hacked down by twenty minutes for a quickie RKO English language release in 1954, two years after it was made. Sins of Rome is clearly a followup to Quo Vadis? and unrelated to the later wave of the more familiar Hercules-inspired movies. Some of the larger sets may very well be leftovers from MGM's super production.

It's also the same story told eight years later in Kirk Douglas' giant 'thinking man's' epic Spartacus. The Italian screenwriters simplify events yet manage to make sure the overheated romantic subplot is active at all times. In this version, Crassus and Spartacus work out a peaceful solution to the slave revolt, only to see it thwarted by personal jealousies!

Sins of Rome rates:
Movie: Good
Video: Fair
Sound: Good