Attila

This is one of the best examples of trash movies ever made. It's the story of Attila, king of Huns, revisited in a typical Italian-comedy style. Thus, Attila becomes a weird barbarian, speaking with a strong, irresistible southern accent, who, heading a small group of even stranger individuals, try to conquer Rome and to destroy the Roman empire. The film is an uninterrupted sequence of gags, not very refined but really, really effective. A must-see, a masterpiece which unfortunately has only been shot in Italian (I think).

When originally released, this crude spoof of sword-and-sandal epics was not a box office success…so much so that leading man Diego Abatantuono – who had scored highly in supporting roles in FANTOZZI CONTRO TUTTI (1980) and the all-star comedy extravaganza, GRAND HOTEL EXCELSIOR (1982) – was forced to rethink his persona and re-emerged a few years later as a more versatile actor, culminating in his appearance in the Oscar-winning MEDITERRANEO (1991).

Anyway, there had previously been an earlier straight Italian epic concerned with the exploits of the legendary Barbarian leader – Pietro Francisci's ATTILA aka ATTILA THE HUN (1954) starring Anthony Quinn, with which I'm also familiar and which also sported the same original subtitle in some quarters; this remake of sorts has, with the advent of time, constant airplay on Italian TV and the homevideo revolution, become a veritable cult classic on its homeground. This was the main reason why I decided to give it another viewing but, alas, it just isn't very good!

True, Abatantuono is ideally cast as the furry-chested, feather-brained leader of a handful of misfit Barbarians out to destroy the Roman Empire after the latter had destroyed their land, ran off with their women and, worst of all (for them), stolen their precious horses. Despite the presence of other emerging Italian comics Mauro Di Francesco and Francesco Salvi, the not displeasing appearance of a scantily clad Rita Rusic and a folkish score, the brew fails to rise to the surface except intermittently: a Barbarian borrowing the horns of a cow to wear on his head so as not to be inferior to his companion sporting a horned helmet, Abatantuono explaining what each letter of his newly-minted name stands for to a group of Romans guarding a bridge, Abatantuono and Di Francesco forced by a disciplinarian Roman schoolteacher to join a class of Roman kids which they have supposedly just attacked, etc. In spite of these occasional felicities, however, the final verdict remains that as a spoof of the historical epic, ATTILA FLAGELLO DI DIO is a long way even from the two BRANCALEONE films starring Vittorio Gassman which predated it by more than a decade

Yes, this is film may be seen as trash, it's certainly a b-movie, but I think it needs to be put in the right context.

Most friends aged between 30 and 35 still remember most of the gags by memory and every time we talk about films at the pub, when we get to Italian commedies, it is mentioned (and everyone starts repeating all the gags).

I'm pretty sure there are a lot of Italian guys, from at least one generation, that consider this film a cult.

I agree, however, that if you don't fit in the above group you will just find it plainly stupid.

For what is worth, I think that the film has been re-mastered and that it should be available (at least in Italy)

A funny farcical comedy that tells the descent of a barbarian warrior from northern Italy to the south to plunder Rome. He will not succeed but on the way he will have a thousand adventures, one more absurd than the previous one.

Well, at last italian producers are selling Attila on DVD, now. No doubt, you can't miss it if you like the early movies of Diego Abatantuomo, here at his "top". Must understand italian very well, though, as most of dialogues are in Abatantuomo's great dialect :-)