Romulus and the Sabines (1961)

Roger Moore was clearly engaged enough with this lightweight peplum to bother to do his own (fairly obvious) dubbing but that’s really all there is to say about this remarkably sterile telling of the tale of the search by the Romans for some ladies to help perpetuate their population. The city of Rome, under Moore’s king Romulus, only had men in it, you see, so he had to try and get hold of some gals from the nearby kingdom of Sabina to sate their increasing ardour. This wasn’t going to be straightforward, though. The Sabines weren’t just going to give their own futures away for the asking by this dashing young man, and so cunning is required. Cunning and theft. Cunning, theft and swordplay. Might this be the start of the Roman thirst for conquest? The film actually has quite decent production standards, but the writing is pretty woeful and there are enough sexual stereotypes here to float them all out along the Tiber and form a nifty little bridge. It’s not so much sword and sandals and togas and tantrums, and the cast of damsels in varying degrees of distress led by their king (Folco Lulli) add a bit of glamour but precious little else as this rumbles along for an overlong hundred minutes with way too much chatter and meandering and nowhere near enough action.