There were several attempts at doing Roman Empire movies in the 50s and 60s. Several of them were good, and others were not so good. The tagline: "with a cast of thousands!" would often accompany these types of films. This one would have read: "with a cast of hundreds!" because it was obviously a low-budget film. Low-Budget films should not attempt epics. Alan Ladd, a fine actor, was horribly miscast in this one, and could not escape his cowboy persona. The whole film had almost all the soldiers as calvary, when historically, the opposite was true. It was the Roman LEGIONS, not calvary. The direction and screenplay was a mess; it was all over the place. The dialogue was unintentionally laughable, with the exception of one good line for the entire film "No man really understands a woman".
But a film cannot hold up with one good line of dialogue. The female lead was some horse-faced woman who was supposed to be sexy. Every other woman in the film was better looking and sexier than she was. Let's not even mention the hilarious attempts at acting by most of the cast. This was an epic, all right; an epic disaster.
Review of Duel of Champions
