The Trojan Horse (La guerra di Troia)

The Trojan Horse, released in Italy as La guerra di Troia, is a 1961 Italian-French co-production and one of the sword-and-sandal films known as peplum. Giorgio Ferroni directed it. It is also known as La Guerre de Troie in France and Der Kampf um Troja in Germany. The Italian-language film runs 105 minutes.

The story is set in the tenth and final year of the Trojan War. It leans loosely on Greek myth and the Iliad but departs from the epic, putting the Trojan hero Aeneas in the foreground and giving him adventures of its own. Steve Reeves plays Aeneas and John Drew Barrymore plays Odysseus, and the wooden horse figures in the tale. The cast also includes Juliette Mayniel, Edy Vessel, Lydia Alfonsi, Warner Bentivegna, Luciana Angiolillo, Arturo Dominici, Mimmo Palmara, Nerio Bernardi, Fernando Tamberlani, Carlo Tamberlani, Giancarlo Bastianoni, Giovanni Cianfriglia and Nello Pazzafini.

Ferroni wrote the script with Ugo Liberatore and Giorgio Stegani, and Mario Ammonini and Giovanni Fusco are credited with the music. A sequel followed in 1962 under the title The Legend of Aeneas. In 2004 the film was restored and shown in the retrospective “Storia Segreta del Cinema Italiano: Italian Kings of the Bs” at the 61st Venice International Film Festival.