Italian studio epics draped in Greco-Roman tunics spun myths into pulp entertainment during the late 1950s boom.
Peplum—named after the ancient Greek garment—overlaps with sword-and-sandal yet denotes specifically Italian-funded productions that mined classical source material for export. Where Hollywood biblical epics flaunted widescreen piety, peplum revelled in pulp excess: rubber monsters, loin-clothed gladiators, and campy dubbing that charmed grindhouse crowds.
Cinecittà’s volume discounts on set rentals, combined with Spain’s lenient shooting permits, let producers film amphitheatres by day and bullfights by night. Scripts were often “patchworks” built around stunt sequences pre-sold to foreign distributors.
Cult midnight screens in the 1970s re-framed peplum as queer camp; academic essays read the bronzed hero as coded homoerotic imagery challenging Catholic conservative norms of the time.
Arrow Video’s 4K restorations reignited interest, while VFX artists reference practical forced-perspective tricks as sustainable alternatives to full CGI crowds.
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