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Originally Posted by sfear
Never heard of peplum. Just did a google search and came across one of his sword and sandal films from 1962. Thanks for mentioning it.
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Genre title for S&S es. Leone reportedly worked second unit on Ben-Hur, and liked to claim he directed the famous chariot scene(disproven). There are quite a few legends abounding, about him, most of them fostered by him, in his lifetime.
A great anecdote about him, involved an actor named Al Mulloch(you may remember him as the first face you see, in extreme close-up, in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly). He was one of the initial gunfighters at the beginning of Once Upon a Time in the West. During production, Mulloch committed suicide, by leaping from a hotel room window(he purported went flying past the stunned Leone on the way down) still dressed in costume. Leone rushed out into the street, frantically trying to retrieve the costume(it was the only one made). The story has fostered the notion that Leone's callous indifference to Mulloch cursed his films to be box office flops, forever after.
I chalk it up, more to crappy US distributors, myself.