Steve Reeves was never a good actor, at best he makes a naïve impression, but usually, like in all his later films, he was just a completely expressionless muscular dummy. In comparison with Robert Wise's "Helen of Troy" a few years earlier, this is like a miniature gipsum copy of a magnificent marble statue. It tries to be monumental, though, and there is some stylishness over the set-up, but the acting is stilted, and even the best actors, like Ulysses, are merely types. The best actors are the women, especially Cassandra och Creussa.The action starts where Homer's Iliad ends, with the desecration of Hector's body and moves up to the fall of Troy with mammoth scenes impressive enough of the apocalyptic destruction of the city, so it's not a disappointing film, although the slow action more often enough will send you to sleep, and you can do other things at the same time while you are watching it.

Although we got to see very little of Steve Reeves's impressive physique in The Trojan Horse, we also didn't hear that impressively dubbed bass in the two Hercules movies.The twist here is an interesting one. Reeves plays Aeneas a Trojan warrior who seems to have more in common with the Greek invaders. He regard Paris played here by Warner Bentivegna as a real punk which he certainly acts like. The irony of hundreds of people being killed on both sides including a lot of good men is not lost on him.In that computer graphic driven spectacle Troy the roles of Paris and Helen were played by Orlando Bloom and Diane Kruger and they were just two crazy kids in love her trying to escape an enforced marriage. Here Helen is played by Edy Vessel and she's quite the scheming vixen.As Peplum pictures go in that era when two or three seemed to be coming out every week the classic tale gets a different and unique version. Ulysses is played by John Drew Barrymore the only other American in the cast.There is a sequel about the further adventures of Aeneas which I'm also interested in. This is all based on Aeneid which is the Trojan version of the events of the fall of Troy and the aftermath by Virgil.

I saw this in the cinema in the early 60s. Fantastic film. So you can guess how happy I was on finding I could order the DVD. But, unless there's something wrong with my machine, they have senselessly butchered the DVD by deleting around 10 vital minutes at the end. The DVD I have moves straight from Paris's death to the sight of the refugees leaving Troy. No scenes showing Aeneas fighting his way from prison to the Palace, killing Ajax on the way, finding his new born son by the body of Creusa who has died in child birth and leading the survivors though burning Troy. It unbalances the whole thing. The DVD I have is from Belle and Blade Studios. Anybody know where I can get a proper version of the film?

As the movie begins, a small group of Trojans (or is it the Greeks) on horseback stand facing towards their beloved Troy (or maybe its Athens). As the epic story is introduced in a voiceover, I watched curiously as one of the horses raised his tail in an arc and then casually "took a dump" one might say. A comment on the upcoming tale or performance? Actually, the horse was rather too severe in his prejudgements. As "sword and sandal" epics go, this one was not too bad. Steve Reeves looked chiseled and handsome, most of the sets and costumes were convincing, and there were some beautiful horses and chariots, although way too many battle scenes, shot long range so it was mostly a blur and a lot of shouting in Italian or something. Not a bad way to brush up on your Homeric history though, with the whole cast of characters from Helen to Casandra, Ulysees to Archilles (who got killed by an arrow shot in the "you know where").