Good story, Not enough for a whole film

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

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

As I've mentioned before in the past, I generally don't think much of the sword and sandal movies that came out of Europe in the 1960s. So you might imagine my surprise when I found this particular example of the genre to be not that bad at all. Now, I'll admit it's far from perfect. The movie does have a major weakness, and that is with the characters. The ten gladiators, for one thing, are pretty much interchangeable; we hardly learn a thing about them such as their names, and they all seem to talk and act alike. Spartacus isn't that much better written, one reason being that he doesn't make that many appearances, and the few times he shows up are pretty short in length. As for the bad guys, they are straight out of the stock character catalog. But if you're willing to put up with the poorly written characters, the movie does all the same manage to be reasonably entertaining. The story is snappily paced, and even manages to put in a bit more plot than usual. The production values aren't bad, and the main selling point of the movie - action - is well done. There's quite a bit of action, and the action is choreographed and directed in a manner to be quite exciting at times. "Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators" isn't a great movie, but it does satisfy the lazy weekend audience. It is perfectly fine non-think entertainment. We all get in that mood on occasion, so when you're in that particular frame of mind, give it a spin in your DVD player.

I saw this one Saturday afternoon, as a teenager, then came across it again in a cheap sword & sandal DVD multipack. Since the price was a couple of bucks I picked it up and watched this again. The film is a hoot, with horrible dubbing, with dialogue and sound effects coming in very late (I guess the whips were supersonic, since they hit before the sound of the crack). I remember thinking when I was younger that the film was like a wrestling feud brought to life, with some extras thrown in and the same still holds true.Rocca and his buddies have left the arena but have been blackballed by the local Vince McMahon. They end up finding work for a fat patrician who is having some slave trouble, thanks to our pal Spartacus (but not Kirk Douglas). The Ten are sent out to recon the situation and meet with Spartacus and find out he's an "OK Joe". They head back with their report and the boss says he will just let them go. Yeah, right! A little drugged wine later and the beefy morons find themselves in the dungeon and the patrician is hatching a plan to destroy Spartacus. Conveniently, the dungeon is located under the gardens of the home and the roof is fairly thin. The guys get out, with the help of the patrician's daughter. They find Spartacus' people slaughtered and the rest taken back to the mines. The lunkheads then launch a guerrilla (more like gorilla, with these muscleheads) campaign to free them, with the help of a blacksmith, while Spartacus gather his army. Much WWE style fighting ensues (though with less convincing punches) and a pretty spectacular battle between the Romans and Spartacus' men (minus Tony Curtis) rages. In the end, Rocca battles the bald henchmen of the patrician to save his love interest.There are better movies out there and there are far worse ones. It doesn't aspire to greatness but it is pretty entertaining, as long as you aren't expecting Olivier. Dan Vadis is likable as Rocca, the head slab of beef, and the patrician is decidedly oilier than the gladiators. The actor playing the bald henchmen is delightfully evil and gets his in the end.If I'm not mistaken (and I haven't seen the film in a while) I believe the opening of this appears on TV in From Dusk Till Dawn (though it might have been a stock shot used in the previous Ten Gladiators film).If you like some cheesy fun or hordes of beefcake, you will probably enjoy this. It's much better than the examples of the genre that ended up on MST3K.

71 B.C. during the rebellion of Spartacus , a gladiator named Rocca (Dan Vadis)and his band of fellows gladiators (Sal Borgese, Vassili Karis, Pietro Torrisi, Jeff Cameron... )flee from Coliseum. After that ,they save the damsel in distress , a senator 's daughter (Ursula Davis) . They're well received by the senator Varro (Gianni Rizzo) , though are poisoned and locked . Later on, they escape and join forces with Spartacus (Ivano Staccioli, alias John Heston) to fight patrician senator Varro. Spartacus wants return to Tracia and is waiting some ships. Ten gladiators are faced at every turn by Roman army. Meanwhile Rocca falls in love with Daliah(Helga Line) and then must rescue her from slavery and death. The slavers are building an aqueduct and the gladiators attack the detachment.This is the second part in the ¨ Ten gladiators trilogy¨. It packs action, fights , sword-play, adventures and some touches of humor . Ample support cast formed by muscle-men and regular from Western and Peplum as Enzo Fiermonte, Jeff Cameron,Pietro Torrisi who in the 80s as Peter McCoy played several sword and witchery movies and Ricardo Pizzuti as Roman soldier , he's usual in Terence Hill-Spencer movies. As comic relief appears Sal Borgese, a sympathetic secondary playing a deaf-mute. Good production values with spectacular final battle full of extras and stock-shots from previous Roman films . It's shot in Rome, Lazio and Barcelona, Cataluña, because it's a co-production Spanish/ Italian produced by Alfonso Balcazar . Atmospheric score by Carlo Savina with catching musical leitmotif, he's usual of Western and substituting to Angelo Francesco Lavagnino who composed the first entry. Cheesy edition by Bruno Mattei, later famous director of ¨Z¨ Italian films.The motion picture is professionally directed by Nick Nostro.The best installment is the first titled ¨I dice gladiatori(1963) or Ten gladiators¨ by Gianfranco Parolini with Roger Browne, Jose Greci and Dan Vavis as Rocca who dies at the end ; here the gladiators taking on Nero, Gianni Rizzo, and his henchman Tijelinus . It's followed by ¨Spartacus and ten gladiators¨ and the third outing titled ¨Triumph of ten gladiators or Il Trionfo dei Dieci Gladiators ¨ again by Nick Nostro and Gianni Rizzo as evil villain.

There are three films featuring the Ten Gladiators and starring Dan Vadis as the muscleman Roccia (literally "The Rock"!); this is the second entry in the series and, with a title like that, comparisons to Stanley Kubrick's SPARTACUS (1960) are bound to arise which, frankly, do it no favors at all! For one thing, the Spartacus of this film is overage and engages in an interminable fight with Vadis on their first meeting (after which they become allies); on the other hand, the slimy Roman senator and chief villain here is given a Charles Laughton-like voice in the English dubbing but is saddled with an incompetent giant (!) for a henchman (actually the same 'actor' was equally ill-at-ease in SAMSON [1961], which I had watched earlier in my peplum marathon). At least, Euro-Cult regular Helga Line' is on hand as the attractive heroine