The mighty Spartan army of 300 macho guys hold off the Persian army in this lame on location would be epic.
The dialog is incredibly stiff and you have to sit through almost an hour of the film listening to the usual sword and sandal bluster before there finally is some fighting.
However the battle scenes are the usual bunch of long shots of soldiers marching followed by closeups of guys banging on each other's shields with their swords for a while.
The cast is actually pretty decent but the stuff that comes out of their mouths:
"Who can understand the way of the gods? They create lovely girls and then turn them into wives."
"Either return carrying this shield in victory or carried on the shield in death."
"Truth is a heady wine. A politician must never exaggerate people's capacity for it."
50's actor Richard Egan a piece of Hollywood beefcake, is the king of Sparta, apparently the decision was made during the production for him to wear some kind of mid life crisis perm haircut. Sir Ralph Richardson shows up billed as Sir Ralph Richardson to give the film some class. The film also has a couple of young lovers who play young lovers.
The film was directed by Rudolph Mate who had a career as a distinguished cinematographer working with Hitchcock, Lang, Wyler and Dreyer. He had a less than distinguished career as a director working with people like, Tony Curtis, Cornel Wilde and Mario Lanza.
The ending of The 300 Spartans was kind of cool, maybe it's available as a clip on You tube.
114 minutes. Written by George St. George.
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