The Seven Magnificent Gladiators (I sette magnifici gladiatori)

Dir: Bruno Mattei

1983

*

After Akira Kurosawa'a classic 1954 Seven Samurai was adapted into several Westerns (The Magnificent Seven (1960) and its sequels) and a sci-fi space adventure (Battle Beyond the Stars 1980), is seems the Gladiator genre (which had something of a revival in the late 70s) was the logical progression in the eyes of the mighty Cannon Films. Never ones to miss a trick (or overspend on a film), I sette magnifici gladiatori (The Seven Magnificent Gladiators) was filmed back to back with Hercules and has an identical cast of actors, with Lou Ferrigno (The Incredible Hulk) taking on the Yul Brynner role and Brad Harris his 'Steve McQueen' style partner. Sybil Danning's character is new and can't really be compared to any of the previous 'seven' characters, although this is her second Seven Samurai remake, following her appearance as a Valkyrie warrior called Saint Exmin in Battle Beyond the Stars. She is pretty much there for titillation and because she was also in Hercules. You could say that Cannon were pioneers and finally had a female as one of the seven (which I've heard people say) but that is giving far too much credit it Cannon and anyway, Battle Beyond the Stars did it three years previous, Danning is there because no one else looks like Danning in skimpy Gladiator-style costumes. The core of the story is exactly the same as Seven Samurai but I would suggest that it is closer to The Magnificent Seven in tone and structure. There is nothing in terms of character development and I didn't know who most of the seven were most of the time. The story goes at a snail’s pace, the fighting scenes are overlong and uninteresting and the interaction between characters is almost non-existent and poorly written, as is the script. It's a hard film to get through and the big final battle comes as a huge anti-climax. Warriors come from just out of frame and attack each Gladiator, which is of course ridiculous as they would have seen them, in this sense the audience is treated like idiots. In one scene, one Gladiator congratulates another for the amount of enemies he's killed and once distracted, a solder, who must have been standing next to him the whole time, stabs him to death, while the other Gladiator runs away shouting 'Sorry!'. If the comedy was intentional then I'd give it more credit, but it's not, it's just dreadful. There is no stand out scene and nothing of interest throughout the entire film, how they had spare footage to create The Adventures of Hercules (without the knowledge of the cast) is staggering. I'm a huge fan of Cannon but this isn't one of their 'So bad it's good' films, it's just 'So bad'.