The Colossus of Rhodes (Italian: Il Colosso di Rodi) is a 1961 Italian sword and sandal film co-written and directed by Sergio Leone. Starring Rory Calhoun, it is a fictional account of the island of Rhodes during its classical period in the late third century BCE before coming under Roman control, using the Colossus of Rhodes as a backdrop for the story of a war hero who becomes involved in two different plots to overthrow a tyrannical king: one by Rhodian patriots and the other by Phoenician agents. The film was Leone's first work as a credited director, in a genre where he already had worked before (as the replacement director for The Last Days of Pompeii and as a secondary director for both Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis). It is perhaps the least known of the seven films he officially directed, and is notable for being the only one without an Ennio Morricone score. The film is also notable for its unusual time period: The time following Alexander the Great’s death (323 BC) but before the rise of the Roman empire (27 BC), known as the Hellenistic era. Most sword-and-sandal epics of the 1950s and 1960s were set in either classical Greece or even earlier (Hercules, Ulysses, The Giant of Marathon) or the later Roman period (Ben Hur, The Magnificent Gladiator, Quo Vadis). The only other films made during the peplum era to use a Hellenistic setting are Hannibal (1959), Revak the Rebel and Siege of Syracuse (both 1960). Plot A Greek military hero named Darios (Rory Calhoun) visits his uncle Lissipu (George Rigaud) on the island of Rhodes in the year 280 BC. Rhodes has just finished constructing an enormous colossal statue of the god Apollo to guard its harbor and is planning an alliance with Phoenicia, which would be hostile to Greece. Darios flirts with the beautiful Diala (Lea Massari), daughter of the statue's mastermind, Carete (Félix Fernández), while becoming involved with a group of rebels headed by Peliocles (Georges Marchal). These rebels seek to overthrow Rhodes' tyrannical king Serse (Roberto Camardiel); but so does Serse's evil second-in-command, Thar (Conrado San Martín). He has Phoenician soldiers smuggled into Rhodes as slaves, and his men occupy the Colossus to secure safe entrance for the Phoenician fleet. The rebels learn of this plan and decide to apply to the Greeks for help; Darios, who is forbidden to leave Rhodes as