Sword-and-sandal

Sword-and-sandal, also known as peplum (pl.: pepla), is a subgenre of largely Italian-made historical, mythological, or biblical epics mostly set in the Greco-Roman antiquity or the Middle Ages. These films attempted to emulate the big-budget Hollywood historical epics of the time, such as Samson and Delilah (1949), Quo Vadis (1951), The Robe (1953), The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben-Hur (1959), Spartacus (1960), and Cleopatra (1963).^[1] These films dominated the Italian film industry from 1958 to 1965, eventually being replaced in 1965 by spaghetti Western and Eurospy films.^[2][3]

The term "peplum" (a Latin word referring to the ancient Greek garment peplos), was introduced by French film critics in the 1960s.^[2][3] The terms "peplum" and "sword-and-sandal" were used in a condescending way by film critics. Later, the terms were embraced by fans of the films, similar to the terms "spaghetti Western" or "shoot-'em-ups". In their English versions, peplum films can be immediately differentiated from their Hollywood counterparts by their use of "clumsy and inadequate" English language dubbing.^[4] A 100-minute documentary on the history of Italy's peplum genre was produced and directed by Antonio Avati in 1977 titled Kolossal: i magnifici Maciste (aka Kino Kolossal).^{[5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]}