Sword and sandal
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Sword and sandal films (or peplums from a Latin word for a sort of tunic that was easy to make and favoured by the costume departments for these films) are a genre of adventure or fantasy films that have subjects set in Biblical or classical antiquity, often with contrived plots based very loosely on mythology or history. Most movies based on Greco-Roman history and mythology, or the surrounding cultures of the same era (Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans, Minoans), etc. are sword and sandal epic films. The greatest productions of this film genre were made between 1958 and 1964, but peplums have experienced a recent renaissance. Broadly considered, this category could encompass such diverse Period films as Ben-Hur, Cleopatra, Titus, Gladiator, King Arthur or The Ten Commandments. In this sense, it is one of the oldest movie genres; the original Ben-Hur was made by Sidney Olcott in 1907; the 1914 silent film Cabiria was important in the development of the art of cinematography, and was one of the first sword-and-sandal films to make use of a massively muscled actor, Bartolomeo Pagano.
More specifically, however, the sword and sandal film genre usually refers to a low-budget Italian movie on a gladiatorial, Biblical or mythological subject, often with a professional bodybuilder in the principal role; the genre occupied much of the popular segment of Italy's movie industry from 1960-1964, before the creation of the spaghetti western. Several famous Italian directors such as Mario Bava and Sergio Leone got their start in the genre as well.
