AllMovie

Umberto Scarpelli's The Giant of Metropolis has always occupied a special place in the hearts of fans of sword-and-sandal movies. Its mix of science fiction and fantasy in an ancient period setting (approximately 20,000 B.C.) makes it almost the distant precursor to such television series as Xena: Warrior Princess and Hercules. The main difference between Scarpelli's movie and those successors is that the Italian feature has no sense of humor -- the players all display the earnestness of a Verdi opera in performance, but that would have been the only way perceived at the time to have pulled off a movie like this. Gordon Mitchell makes an unusually handsome (and, somewhat unconventionally for the time, beardless) hero, while Rolando Lupi, as the villain Yotar, resembles a poor man's James Mason. Bella Cortez and Liana Orfei both make extraordinarily beautiful heroines, although Orfei's character of Queen Texen is written out of the plot a little too early. The story, though steeped in science fiction elements, also offers the discerning viewer the added allure of its mythic elements -- despite the fantasy settings and devices, the plot and structure of The Giant of Metropolis retain elements familiar from actual Greek mythology, melding components of Hesiod's Theogeny, the story of Daedalus, and any number of tales surrounding the origins of men and gods. The principal allure of the movie, however, is its setting, a super-scientific city in the ancient world, reminiscent in an odd way of the setting of the first Flash Gordon serial (which offered an ancient setting in a super-scientific world). The low budget shows through in the production design for the city of Metropolis, which, as seen in wide exterior shots, resembles nothing so much as the product of an early-'60s Kenner building set with a few modifications; still that element and the sketchy nature of the plot development help give the movie a strange, dream-like quality. Add to that the eeriness of the interior designs (including the oddness of some of the weaponry, which includes lots of metal-claw devices), and the science fiction element in Yotar's experiments on his son, akin to something from a Frankenstein movie, and The Giant of Metropolis makes a diverting 90 minutes. The only flaw, apart from the threadbare production values, may be the sadism that is present in the action midway through the movie, during the tests to which Yotar subjects the hero Obro.