Hannibal is a victim of extremely poor production values, horrendous Italian directors, and even worse Italian actors. Mature does his best to salvage the film, but it is as hopeless as the war between Rome and Carthage, which would end with the complete destruction of Carthage after its third and final disastrous war against Rome. The great Italian directors and actors excelled in neorealism. This film is about as far from realism as you can get. The corny love story subplot only worsens the film with an ugly B Italian actress. Almost every great Italian film ever made, with the exception of modern Tornatore films, like the great Cinema Paradiso and a few others since the post-1980s, have been in black and white. This turkey had a hack director, hack actors, and hack production values that tried to use visual violence and gore in place of acting, directing and a script. It is a mess. I wrote a book on Italian Cinema (The Development of Italian Cinema).The book analyzes the great Italian neorealism period immediately following WW2 and lasting for two decades before Fellini and other great Italian directors took over the transition to modern films. Hannibal was not part of the process; it was a hack project from the start. Don't waste your time with this junk.

it has the virtues and the sins of the genre. and Victor Mature. if you do not like the stories of Sandals and Fights, you have a lot of critics against it. a fact far to be fair because not the historical accuracy or the realism of battle scenes are the purpose but a form of entertainment, giving a nice - but not credible love story- and few moral virtues in the right package. so, it is not real easy to ignore its charm, naive in many scenes, the good intentions, the effort of Gabriele Ferzetti to do a reasonable Roman senator portrait and Rita Gam, not the most inspired Sylvia but looking for the decent way to propose a credible character. so, a nice film. predictable but far to be bad.

The legendary Edgar G. Ulmer has much to answer for -- certainly his willingness to make pictures on a shoestring resulted in some bloody awful pictures -- but he nevertheless has a talent that shines through even in some of his flimsiest pictures. On the other hand, even with fairly strong material (as here) the unevenness is always evident. Among Roman/Biblical epics, though, this, for all its messiness and its generally miserable acting, is not one of the dullest. (For me those are the almost-impossible-to-sit-through "El Cid" and "The Fall of the Roman Empire," pictures with much higher budgets and fancier casts, and made by a far superior director, Anthony Mann. But they are truly tedious.) Why? First of all, the story of Hannibal's campaigns is genuinely interesting from military and historical standpoints, and Ulmer brought them to life in a number of really superb battle scenes, beautifully edited. (Yes, yes, there are obviously cheap things -- the fake blood is terrible and the mix of studio and outdoor scenes is very poorly matched, but the effect of these scenes is generally excellent.) The novelty of seeing elephants climbing over the Alps, too, is refreshing. On the other hand, much of the acting, and, especially, the dubbing and sound mixing, is frankly at an amateur level. Rarely, in fact, have I heard such a poor soundtrack, with characters voice levels not matching camera distance, ludicrous crowd ad libs, etc. The score, too, though rather stirring, frequently seems wildly inappropriate (a common problem in Ulmer films, which is ironic, since Ulmer considered himself something of a musician). So it's interesting to see, to put it bluntly, how working in the lower depths corrupted a basically talented director into accepting standards way below par, even on what was, apparently, a film with a more or less "normal" budget. Kudos, though, to Victor Mature, that oft-misused and underrated actor ("My Darling Clementine" and Anthony Mann's "The Last Frontier" give strong evidence of actual talent). He makes a strong, sober Hannibal, not without a sense of humor. "Hannibal" is, despite fully justifiable criticism, a pretty entertaining picture. We've all sat through much worse.

I like Victor MATURE and would even go as far as to call myself a "fan" of this Arnold Schwarzenegger-predecessor/archetype (with Austrian roots actually), but even I have to admit, that this flick ain't any of his better ones, unfortunately (sigh).It's awkward from beginning to end: The first scene takes place in the Roman Senate, then you have a long one with the elephants crossing the Alps (that's probably the best of the whole picture, actually you can now turn off your TV-set) and now we're already well over 5 minutes into the picture, still no Hannibal/Annibale. Suddenly one sees some elephants getting loose and a guy which we can identify on second look as Victor Mature does some awkward gestures to get the elephants away. Pretty strange entry for "the hero". Only in scene number 4 and well 10 minutes into the movie someone takes the chance to identify our hero and calls him with his name. OK, the introduction of "the hero" has been managed, somehow.The ending is equally abrupt, we see Hannibal's army moving along and get a voice over. Obvioulsly the directors (Edgar G. Ulmer usually does it better, but I assume he didn't have much to say in this one) had decided that enough celluloid had been "wasted" and called it a day.The dialog is so unsophisticated, it hurts, but still not unintentionally funny, only hammy and boring, witless.Everything in this picture is unfortunately mediocre to sub-par: ahead and foremost the script, but also acting (Victor is certainly also already too old for the role, sorry), photography, whatever. Only the music by Carlo RUSTICHELLI is slightly better, of course he's no Miklos ROSZA either, but at least the music is fitting and powerful. But that does not justify sitting through the whole picture (enjoy the main theme and quit).For Terence HILL Fans it is worth mentioning that Mario GIROTTI, later known as TH, has a medium large part here and you can watch him "acting" (woodenly, but so what) a Roman.So my rating is: If you are a Victor Mature fan: 4 out of 10, if you are a Terence Hill fan: 3 out of 10, if you're neither nor: 2 out of 10, so better stay away.I wish I could have written a better review. :-(