Movie Review: The Giant of Marathon (1959) dir. Jacques Tourneur
The year is 490 B.C., and the mighty Phillipides (Steve Reeves) has just won the Olympics. Back home in Athens, Phillipides is appointed the leader of the Sacred Guard. Their job is to ensure that Athens remains a democracy, even with the threatened invasion of King Darius of Persia. But not everyone in Athens is opposed to the idea of being ruled by Persia. In particular, Teocrito (Sergio Fantoni) and his crony Creuso (Ivo Garrani) would bend the knee to Darius in exchange for local power. They plot to bring Phillipides to their side to neutralize the Sacred Guard.
As part of the plan, Teocrito orders his kept woman Karis (Daniela Rocca) to seduce Phillipides. This fails because Phillipides has just now fallen in love with a mysterious girl he recently met. This turns out to be Andromeda (Mylene Demongeot), daughter of Creuso and involuntary betrothed of Teocrito. When Teocrito attempts to offer Andromeda to Phillipides (since he doesn’t actually love her and sees her as a bargaining chip), it doesn’t sway our hero, but does sour him on Andromeda (because he thinks she’s voluntarily going along with this) and he retires to his farm.
King Darius’ fleet arrives along with the traitor Hippia, and Phillipides is called out of retirement. He quickly realizes that the Athenians cannot defeat Persia alone and goes to request the aid of Sparta. Teocrito tries to stop him, but ambushes having failed, defects to Darius with a plan to circumvent the defending army.
It’s up to Phillipides to save the day by running from Marathon to Athens!
This Italian/French peplum (sword and sandal) movie is loosely based on events surrounding the Battle of Marathon. The “giant” part is metaphorical, with Phillipides being merely a reasonably large human with excellent muscles.
The acting is reasonable for a B-movie, Reeves has some good wrestling scenes, and the dancing girls move nicely. Both men and women wear skimpy outfits, though the men are on screen a lot more.
The version I watched is the one put out by The Film Crew, a riffing group that included MST3K alumni Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. They skipped the silhouettes and just did quips during the movie, most fairly funny. The mid-movie break sketch was tedious, though.
Both the original and riffed versions are fun time-wasters.
