HELEN OF TROY

 Even the hardiest of Robert Wise fans tend to give this one a miss, (which isn't surprising if you have to sit through the overture), but it certainly isn't the worst of the widescreen epics that the studios churned out in the fifties in an attempt to drag audiences away from their television sets. "Helen of Troy" was another international co-production, filmed at Cinecitta and various locations in Italy and it certainly looked the part, (the battle scenes are particularly spectacular). Unfortunately, the script is a mish-mash of bad dialogue and well-known phrases, (at one point Helen actually says 'Beware of the Greeks bearing gifts'), mouthed in English by leads who couldn't really speak the language.

Rossana Podesta who played Helen is said to have learned her lines phonetically while Jacques Sernas, (Paris), has a voice clearly not emanating from the rest of him. Then there's a young Brigitte Bardot while various Spartans and Trojans include Cedric Hardwicke, Niall MacGinnis, Torin Thatcher, Harry Andrews, Ronald Lewis and Stanley Baker as Achilles the Heel. It's not much of a movie but as schoolboy adventure yarns go it's certainly entertaining and will brighten a dull afternoon any day.