Best movies like The Last Days of Pompeii

Grazia de Plessans abandons her studies in a convent following a mystical crisis. In her paternal house, she studies music together with maestro Claudio Morillot with whom she ends up falling in love.

An actress becomes the king's mistress and persuades him to convert the palace to a serviceman's home.

The feature length Normal Love is Jack Smith’s follow up to his now legendary film Flaming Creatures. This vivid, full-color homage to B-movies is a dizzying display of camp that clearly affirms Smith’s role as the driving force behind underground cinema and performance art of the post-war era. The cast includes Mario Montez, Diane de Prima, Tiny Tim, Francis Francine, Beverley Grant and John Vaccaro. Smith was known to constantly re-edit the film, often during screenings as it was still unspooling from the projector. This print has been restored under the supervision of Jerry Tartaglia and is provided by Filmmakers Co-operative in New York City.

An elderly chestnut vendor lives in poverty but once a month puts on a show with silk and a carriage to impress her daughter in a convent. One day she is robbed of her meager savings.

During the latter years of the reign of the tyrannical Roman emperor Nero, Marcus Vinicius, one of Nero's officers, falls in love with a young Christian named Lygia, attempting to enslave her. Lygia's protector, the noble and burly Ursus, works to save her from Vinicius' clutches. Pursuing Lygia, Vinicius finds himself at a catacomb prayer meeting led by the apostle Peter and finds his conscience stirring-- just as Nero orders Rome burned. A landmark in epic film, Enrico Guazzoni’s grand-scale masterpiece laid the foundations for what colossal Italian spectacles would become. The film had tremendous influence on Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria (1914) and D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).

Volcanic activity frees giant scorpions from the earth who wreak havoc in the rural countryside and eventually threaten Mexico City.

In 79 A.D., Milo, a slave turned gladiator, finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

In "Fabiola" (1918) Herr Guarzzoni moved from the earliest days of Christianity when the new faith was struggling to just survive to a later period in the Roman Empire when the religion was a major force and attempting to win over Rome.

This propaganda film was partly inspired by the story of the first Italian heavyweight champion Primo Carnera who, after winning the title with Al Capone’s help in 1933, was beaten the following year by the Jewish Max Bear and then again by the ‘Brown Bomber’ Detroit Joe Lewis in June 1935, on the eve of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia. This match provoked numerous racial skirmishes on the streets of Harlem between the Black community and pro-Fascist Italian-Americans. The film overturns historical facts and here, obviously, it is the white boxer who wins in order to demonstrate the superiority of the “Aryan Italians” over the “sinister Jewish entrepreneurs” and the “savage Afro-American fans in Yankee Stadium”. In the film, these were played by South African prisoners-of-war interred in a work camp, which the German and Italian propaganda ministries had set up near Cinecittà “for cinematic purposes”.

Pompeii 79AD, mere days before the Vesuvian eruption. Glaucus and Jone are in love with each other. Arbaces, the Egyptian High Priest, is determined to conquer Jone. Glaucus purchases Nydia, the blind and long-suffering slave. Nydia falls in love with Glaucus and asks Arbaces for his help. He gives her a potion to make Glaucus fall in love with her-- In fact, a poison which will cause violent insanity. Produced by Turin-based Ambrosio Films.

Well-respected Pompeiian Glaucus performs an act of kindness by purchasing Nydia, a blind slave being mistreated by her owner. Nydia falls in love with her new master, but he only has eyes for Ione. Ione in turn is lusted after by Arbace, an Egyptian high priest of Isis. When Nydia beseeches Isis for help in capturing Glaucus' heart, Arbace gives her a "love" potion-- an elixir made to drive Glaucus mad, securing Ione for himself. Ultimately, Mount Vesuvius will end their lives and seal their fates in a terrible, glorious eruption.

In this action-filled spectacle set in ancient Pompeii, a blacksmith becomes a Roman gladiator, though his rise to wealth and power is jeopardized by his son's Christianity and the eruption of Vesuvius.

Glaucus, a demobilized centurion returns home to Pompeii to find his father murdered by a gang of black-hooded Christian robbers that terrorizes the city and he decides to investigate the matter while the nearby volcano threatens to erupt.

In this espionage film, Mata Hari's daughter takes the mantle from her notorious mother and entangles her self in an Asian web of intrigue and war.

A test rocket carrying wasps to outer space, to study the effects on them of weightlessness and radiations, crashes out of control back to Earth, into the jungles of Africa. The two astrobiologists in charge of the test mount an expedition to the Darkest Continent to retrieve their experiment, only to find the wasps have grown to giant size which are panicking all forms of life as they quest for food.

Seduced and abandonned by her fiance, Maria Ferrante leaves home to avoid any scandal. She is trying to find work and place to stay but one misfortune after another comes into her life Venice Film Festival 1940

Directed by Carmine Gallone and Godofredo Mateldi.

As the first nomadic tribes wander across the vast wilderness of the infant planet they confront hostilities created by the harsh environment and each other. After a massive volcanic eruption a tribal chief is killed and his two sons fight for supremacy, not only for the leadership of the tribe but also for the love of a beautiful young woman. The age-old battlegrounds of rivalry, envy and passion are explored in this tale of prehistoric adventure.

A stone-encrusted body is unearthed at Pompeii, and people left alone with it keep dying of crushed skulls...

In San Francisco, Sylvia Douglas and her fiancée, James Callahan, a reformed crook, make their getaway after Jim, disgusted with his inability to find a job, un-reforms and steals a diamond necklace. Graham, a detective, gives chase to a desolate island in the South Pacific where a rum-running gangster, Murdock, holds him captive. Callahan becomes infatuated with a native girl, Leona, and Sylvia turns to Graham for protection against the offensive Murdock. A volcano eruption causes problems for all.

Produced in Italy in breathtaking Technicolor, this biographical story of Puccini (played by L'avventura's Gabriele Ferzetti) spans his creative life from early student days to the height of success, including his early flop Madama Butterfly and his incomplete Turandot. Along the way he encounters three women who change his life, including a sexy, beautiful singer (Two for the Road's Nadia Gray) whom he drops for a small town girl (Sirocco's Marta Toren), and a servant girl who commits suicide over him. Well-selected excerpts from Manon, La Boheme, Madama Butterfly and Turandot are featured along with other Puccini music, including the voice of Beniamino Gigli. Sets, costumes and production values are first class, all sumptuously filmed by Claude Renoir.

When a former Special Ops commando visits Pompeii, his wife and daughter are trapped as Mt. Vesuvius erupts with massive force. While his family fights to survive the deadly onslaught of heat and lava, he enlists his former teammates in a daring operation beneath the ruins of the city of Pompeii.

Martha Eggerth heads the cast of Casta Diva, but the central character is famed Italian composer Vincenzo Bellini, here played by American actor Phillips Holmes. Paying but scant attention the facts, the film concentrates on Bellini's colorful love life. Evidently the film went through several rewriting processes, as witness the curious performances of Donald Calthrop and Arthur Margetson, whose characters do complete about-faces halfway through the story. Amidst so many British accents, Martha Eggerth's Polish intonations seem out of place, but she photographs beautifully and sings quite well. Casta Diva was attractively filmed on location in Naples. Not to be confused with the 1954 remake (by Gallone himself) or to the English language version "The Divine Spark" (also directed by Gallone and starred by Eggerth).

As Christmas approaches, Elizabeth Bennett, a New York event planner is sent to a quaint, small town to organize a holiday festival. When she arrives, she finds William Darcy, a high-profile billionaire lacking in holiday spirit, in the process of selling the charming estate she hoped to use as a venue. Elizabeth persuades the reluctant Darcy to let her hold the festival on the historical estate and, before long, the unlikely pair begins falling for each other.

The 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens was the deadliest in U.S. history. Survivor testimonies and rare images reveal the cataclysms it unleashed.

The subject of this documentary is a straightforward one: presenter Andrew Wallace-Hadrill introduces us to the treasures of Herculaneum, the city close to Pompeii that suffered a similar fate as a result of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but which was covered under a far thicker layer of lava and other materials.

Join narrator Patrick Stewart on a sweeping journey through Earth's fascinating history -- from the formation of ancient, geological artifacts to the modern exploration of the moon. The film is a storehouse of facts you probably didn't know. For instance, more than 18,000 meteorites strike Earth each year; it's 3,000 degrees four miles below Earth's surface; and Mount Everest's peak was once part of the ocean floor.

The volcanic eruption that ravaged Pompeii in year 79 is one of the most famous in history. It is known how its victims died, but how did they live? A new insight into the lives of the people who lived in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius before its cataclysmic eruption.

For over a century, tens of millions of visitors have marveled at the natural beauty of Yellowstone National Park. But, beneath all this beauty lurks a beast. Yellowstone sits directly above one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth. For the past two million years, this supervolcano has erupted roughly every 600,000 years. The last major eruption occurred 640,000 years ago. So, is it overdue for another eruption? There have been disturbing signals... Supervolcano: Yellowstone's Fury examines the cataclysmic effect an eruption would have on the world. It would be the largest natural disaster in recorded history. NYU Earth Scientist Michael Rampino warns, "An eruption like Yellowstone could trigger the end of civilization as we know it." For experts, the question is not if there will be another eruption, but when. University of Toronto geologist John Westgate agrees: "There will be a very large-scale supervolcanic eruption from Yellowstone. That's a fact."

What life was like in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii moments before it was devastated by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

In ancient Pompeii, slaves are bought and sold for household chores and sex. A mysterious queen moves among the elite, meantime secretly helping the slaves to escape. Eventually her life is also in jeopardy, and as the volcano erupts she and the slaves attempt to escape while being chased by the military

In 79 AD, one of the infamous natural disasters in human history occurred when Mount Vesuvius erupted. With speculative dramatizations of various inhabitants' final hours along with detailed documentation of the known facts concerning the eruption, the horrific day is vividly brought to life.

This tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.

Marina di Malombra (Borelli) lives in a castle prior to her wedding. She begins to read letters written by an ancestor called Cecilia. She finds out that Cecilia was driven to her death by her uncle. Marina identifies with Cecilia and take revenge on her behalf by murdering her uncle.