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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sorry, this movie sucks

So much average

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Talk about guilty pleasures. I saw this film for the first time when I was about 8-years old. Back in those days you really only saw movies once - with mum and dad at the local cinema on Friday night. But my memory wrapped around this film almost as if I had a rewind button inside my head. It was one of those big-screen epics that made an impression on me.With your Roman Empire movies, your best bet is to set the story in the reign of one of the three mad emperors - Nero is tops, but Caligula and Commodus are the next best thing. Someone like Augustus with his stable, 40-year reign is just a little too sedate when it comes to drama - a bit like the Eisenhower era.Set in Rome during the reign of Caligula, all Demetrius (Victor Mature) wants to do is hand over the robe of Jesus to Peter (Michael Rennie), and lead a quiet life as a potter. Instead he has his faith shaken, and ends up in the arena where he dispatches many opponents and a streak of tigers. Along the way his most dangerous enemy turns out to be Messalina (Susan Hayward), the wife of Caligula's uncle Claudius. It takes Peter and a good buddy from the arena, Glycon (William Marshall), to guide him back to the light.Well that's the story; the script is there to keep the spectacular arena scenes apart, and clear the set for Jay Robinson's viperish and eye-poppingly campy interpretation of Caligula. Despite tigers, dancing girls, oiled muscles, nets, tridents and short swords, the movie would have been pretty heavy going without Jay.Victor Mature is on screen for just about the whole movie and for the most part is either angry or anguished. I've always thought he was pretty good for a guy who once told a club, which did not accept actors as members, that he wasn't an actor and he had the reviews to prove it.One actor who was perfect in his role was Richard Egan. He plays Dardanius, a gladiator with attitude, and he looks the part with more muscles and teeth than Burt Lancaster.Susan Hayward gave Messalina some of the same medicine Jay Robinson gave Caligula; together they keep the movie from getting too serious. I love the way Messalina does a complete turnaround right at the end to wrap the whole thing up in about two minutes flat.Debra Paget is beautiful. Michael Rennie has gravitas and William Marshall is imposing - two great voices in the one movie.Although technical aspects weren't things I noticed much back in the 50's, I can now appreciate how Franz Waxman's score gave the film spirituality and depth. Waxman was a composer who contributed intelligent scores to every film he did without repeating himself.I must admit I still have a soft spot for this film; the arena scenes alone are worth the price of admission.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is a fictional 1954 a sequel to The Robe. and it was based on characters created by Lloyd C. Douglas's novel.It features Victor Mature as Demetrius, a Christian slave made to fight in the Roman arena as a gladiator, together with Susan Hayward,Ernest Borgnine, William Marshall, Michael Rennie, Jay Robinson, Debra Paget, and a young Anne Bancroft in one of her early roles during her film career.Thrown in jail for defending an elderly merchant from a sadistic Roman legionnaire, Demetrius is forced to attend gladiator school and fight in the arena for the amusement of the mad, debauched emperor Caligula.This allows Demetrius to attract the attention of Messalina, the nymphomaniac wife of the soon-to-be emperor Claudius. For a short while,Demetrius lost his faith in God but he was allowed to get re-acquainted with his Christian faith through the Apostle Peter.This happens to be more of a gladiator epic rather than a religious one like its predecessor film,The Robe.People would probably watch it more for the action scenes.Too bad that it won't allow viewers to have some serious thoughts about their religion particularly their relationship to both God and Jesus.Despite being advertised as The Robe's sequel,it is definitely a different film compared to it.

Demetrius and the Gladiators is a sequel to The Robe. It's directed by Delmer Daves and stars Victor Mature as Demetrius, a Christian slave made to fight in the Roman arena as a gladiator ( and ultimately entering into a bigger fight, that of faith), and Susan Hayward as Messalina. Filling out the support cast are Ernest Borgnine, William Marshall, Michael Rennie, and Jay Robinson as the maniacal emperor Caligula. The screenplay is from Philip Dunne (How Green Was My Valley/ The Agony and the Ecstasy} and cinematography comes courtesy of Milton R. Krasner (Academy Award winner Best Color Cinematography for Three Coins in the Fountain 1955).Following straight on from The Robe, Demetrius and the Gladiators is a safe and enjoyable Biblical picture that doesn't outstay its welcome. Running at just over 100 minutes, the film is far from being epic in its telling. However, and without cramming in, it does contain all the necessary ingredients to make up a sweaty sword and sandals pie. Filmed in CinemaScope, persecuted hero, bonkers villain, sexy babe, huge sets, colourful costumes, and fights, lots of fights. Thankfully the serious dialogue is mostly kept brief, there a few things worse in this genre of film than bloated discourse on religious beliefs and political dalliances. Get in there, let us know what is going on, and move on to the next chapter of the story. This is something that Daves' film does real well, it has an eagerness to entertain with dots of gusto and sexual swagger. The acting is mixed, Mature is solid without ever really convincing as the heroic figure of Demetrius, Hayward and Robinson are camping it up and thus entertain royally, while Borgnine and Rennie earn there pay.Very much like another Phillip Dunne screenplay genre piece, David And Bathsheba, this one is often overlooked or forgotten in discussion about the sword & sandals genre. That both film's are not in the same league as the likes of Ben-Hur and Spartacus is a given, but both have much to offer the discerning cinephile. Recommended Sunday afternoon fare with a flagon of claret and a roast ox dinner. 7/10

One thing I have not seen mentioned yet in these reviews is that it made a piece of movie history: it was the first Hollywood feature to show a black man knocking a white man on his ass. Blackula-to-be William Marshall, in defending Victor Mature, knocks Richard Egan on his butt. Never happened before in a Hollywood film. I actually saw a "Southern" version which cut this scene...It's one of the hallmark sword and sorcery films. Excellent swordplay, animals in the arena, Jay Robinson (the Ultimate Caligula), and John the Baptist shows up at the end.I can't imagine what the director was thinking to do Mr. Marshall's scene, but it's powerful.