What is it about the tale of 300 Spartans holding off the whole of the Persian army that haunts us still?

At some point they'll make the great version of this story, until that day comes this film will do nicely.

The plot has the 300 Spartans going off with a small band of other Greeks to perform a delaying action in a narrow pass against the vastly superior Persian Army. They delay the Persians for several days before a final and terrible battle that assured them their place in history.

The battle scenes are wonderful, as is pretty much everything in this film. The problem is that they've shoehorned a love story into this testosterone charge film to the point it distracts from the rest of the film, it just doesn't belong. Actually most of the early part of the film, before the troops move out is rather soapy. However once the troops march the film picks up, and other than the damned romance is fine film.

See this movie. Forgive the soap and you'll have a rousing good time.

8 out of 10.

With the release of the enormously popular 300 which was based on a graphic novel attention focused on this 1962 version which some people said was superior.

In 480 BC King Xerxes of Persia is expanding his empire to the independent Greek islands then the only free part of the known world.

King Leonidas and his 300 Spartans have to hold off Xerxes men until further Greek help arrives.

This is a starch B movie, filmed on location in Greece with several British thespians giving it some class but its very slow with a lot of talking, an uninspiring plot and some lacklustre action scenes. Some of the acting is a bit on the hammy side, the end death scene was rather laughable.

The problem is comparing it with the more recent stylised CGI heavy version, The 300 Spartans gets a KO in the first round.

The Spartans from 300 look like battle hardened soldiers with tactical sophistication. The fighting is bloody and visceral. There is more plot and more camp, just look at the state of the Persian King who looks like he got dressed by Liberace.

The 300 Spartans just feels like an inferior product by comparison.

An early film version that retells the classic story of the Battle of Thermopylae, in which King Leonidas and his 300 loyal Spartan warriors fought the Persian forces of King Xerxes, who were said to number over a million. This was a childhood favourite of comic book author Frank Miller, whose comic book version of the same story, 300, was made in a 2006 film by Zach Snyder.

It's hard to compare the two films because they're so very different. 300 is a heavily stylised comic book film filled with garish violence and green-screen effects. By contrast, THE 300 SPARTANS is a traditional sword and sandal adventure in which the battle doesn't even take place until the last half hour of a two hour film. If I'm honest, this has too much back story while 300 has too little.

Still, there's much to recommend in THE 300 SPARTANS, not least some solid acting in the likes of rugged lead Richard Egan and Ralph Richardson in a minor role. The movie was actually shot in Greece, which adds plenty of authenticity to it, and the action scenes are handled with aplomb and just as exciting as those in 300. The first half is quite slow and there's a tacked-on romantic sub-plot which drags things down alongside a couple of those needless dancing scenes to pad out the running time, but it's still a solid, able production that provides a fairly faithful retelling of the source material. If you want a fantastic adaptation of the story that blows away both film versions, check out Steven Pressfield's gritty novel, GATES OF FIRE.