It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Among other disappointments with The Beast Of Babylon was the fact that the fabled hanging gardens of Babylon were nowhere to be seen. It was one of those 7 wonders of the ancient world and I thought that at least we'd get a depiction. Probably not in the budget.It's the last days of the Babylonian Empire though few want to talk about it. Mostly because they are ruled by a genuine nut case Balthazar played in ancient Snidely Whiplash fashion by Piero Lulli.The hero of the piece is Gordon Scott formerly a big screen Tarzan with pecs to die for. He's been spending time at the Persian court where among other things they have adapted a monotheistic religion courtesy of Zarathustra and they've developed a toleration policy for religious and ethnic minorities. Not so in Babylon where minorities if they're young and beautiful women are tossed into a fiery pit as sacrifice to the head Deity Ishtar. With the emperor getting appropriate jollies.A lot of recycled material from other Peplum films gives The Beast of Babylon a rather tired look to it. And in a film centered in Babylon I figured to see those hanging gardens.

The tyrant Balthazar (habitual nasty Spaghetti Western , Folco Lulli), usurper of Babylone , rules the city with violence and atrocities . He organizes continuous sacrifices of maids along with the priestess (Moira Orfei , Peplum usual , along with her sister Liana Orfei) of Astarte . Nippur (Gordon Scott , here one of the few movies to show him with chest hair) , legitimate heir of throne , returns from exile with aim to retrieve the kingdom left by his father Sargon , kidnapped by Balthazar . During his journey , Nippur frees Tamira (Genevieve Grad ), a Jewish girl prepared to be sacrificed for Goddess Ishtar . Nippur is imprisoned by the usurper , but he escapes and is helped by king Persian Cyrus (Mario Petri).This is an agreeable Sword and Sandals movie with noisy action , extraordinary adventures , usual dancing scenes and spectacular final battle . Gordon Scott is nice as the mythical hero who finds several dangerous situations while attempting save his lover and recover the throne . He acted as a bouncing hero in great number of films and was randomly assigned the identity of Hércules , Goliath , Samsom for US viewers . Scott usually playing historic characters , such as ¨Coroliano¨, ¨Mucius Scevola¨ and ¨Remo¨. He was one along with Ed Fury, Dan Vadis, Alain Steel , Mark Forest, Reg Park , among others, whom the seek fame and fortune acting absurdly muscle mythological figures, but nobody topped Steve Reeves and Gordon Scott in popularity.The film follows a similar plot to famous film ¨Intolerance¨ (1916) by D.W. Griffith , about fall of Babylone , though here appears a pretty malicious Balthazar , well played by Folco Lulli , but not the biblical history about 'prophet Daniel and the lions' . However , the movie has not mythological accuracy , neither expecting historical . Other pictures about these Babylonic events are the followings : ¨I Semiramide (1953)¨ by Primo Zeglio with Ivonne Furneaux and John Erickson ; ¨Semiramis, slave and Queen¨ by Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia ; and ¨Seven thunderbolts(1962)¨ by Silvio Amadio with Jackie Lane and Howard Duff .

Say what you want about the genre of sword and sandal films. Without any historical credibility whatsoever or any similarities with the historical/mythical characters that give the heroes their names some muscle men, mostly American bodybuilders fight for freedom and glory somewhere in the ancient world. This time around it's Gordon Scott as prince Nippur (name taken from an ancient Summerian city located in modern day Iraq) returning from exile after calls from the oppressed people of Babylon, tormented by their usurper with slavery and human sacrifices. In the tradition of Samson and Hercules prince Nippur has superhuman strength, hence overpowering the evil forces to bring freedom and justice back to the empire. Sounds a bit like Anakin Skywalkers/Darth Vaders monologue before the climatic battle at the end of Star Wars Episode 3, though the story is a little too interlaced for film of that length. I like this cheesy flicks on a lazy Saturday morning like today, especially as I', down with a cold, the downside of this movie is that there are way too many characters, both good and evil,too long scenes of sacrifices and random violence against the slaved populace - I mean we get it, the bad guy is REALLY bad - and stereotypical scenes where the trapped or chained hero overcomes all odds in a heroic display of his power to jump in for the rescue at the end. It is entertaining, no doubts there, but with a dozen women wearing same or similar wigs all guys wearing fake beards and armor it's kinda hard to follow the story in detail. You leave for 5 minutes and you don't know what happened cause all throughout the flick new characters are introduced - or killed. The story itself is very interchangeable, so if you'd put in Hercules and a Greek polis where this stuff had happened, it would have worked just as well. For situations like mine atm, where I can't do anything else anyways this film is good, would have been perfect if the storyline was more simple, but other than that it has most things that makes a cheesy sword and sandal flick so entertaining. Silly costumes, bad acting, bad fake beards, bad wigs, random backdrops from obviously various other productions and lots of scenes where a muscle man can show his biceps. 4 or 10 points, however quite entertaining.

Another case of where the dubbing destroys a decent little movie. The subtitled version I saw under the title of Hero of Babylon is much better than the Beast of Babylon with English dubbing. For what ever reason it plays less silly. The plot is the typical muscle bound hero fights and wins the freedom of an oppressed people but its done with just enough conviction of the leads that you do care what happens. The film is a really good action film for most of its run, falling into a bit of silliness as the tries to tie up all the plot threads.