He had a favored freedman, Sporus, castrated, then married him in a ceremony in which Sporus was dressed in the traditional garb of a bride and Nero played the groom. He sought out sexual thrills like a hog snuffling for truffles. He was famous for never wearing the same garment twice. Nero watched the destruction from a safe elevation, singing of the decimation of Troy. He spent a fortune building an ornate palace, only to have it burn down, along with the rest of the city of Rome, in a conflagration that lasted for more than a week.

Nero’s profligacy went beyond slaughtering his nearest and dearest. He also murdered his second wife, the noblewoman Poppaea Sabina, by kicking her in the belly while she was pregnant. He received her decapitated head when it was delivered to his court. At the age of twenty-four, Nero divorced her, banished her, ordered her bound with her wrists slit, and had her suffocated in a steam bath. Nero was betrothed at eleven and married at fifteen, to his adoptive stepsister, Claudia Octavia, the daughter of the emperor Claudius. He sought to poison her, then to have her crushed by a falling ceiling or drowned in a self-sinking boat, before ultimately having her murder disguised as a suicide. According to various Roman historians, he commissioned the assassination of Agrippina the Younger-his mother and sometime lover.

However this is only a minor quibble and does nothing to diminish the greatness of this issue.Nero, who was enthroned in Rome in 54 A.D., at the age of sixteen, and went on to rule for nearly a decade and a half, developed a reputation for tyranny, murderous cruelty, and decadence that has survived for nearly two thousand years. Feeney who persists in calling the leading lady's character Leega instead of Lygia and neglects to tell us that the opening narration is spoken by MGM favourite Walter Pidgeon (uncredited). These scenes all come across extremely well on this excellent DVD which comes with a trailer, a splendid 45 minute featurette 'Quo Vadis And The Genesis of the Biblical Epic' and a commentary by one F.X. The picture is also buoyed by some colourful and elaborate set pieces such as the Vestal Virgins singing and wildly dancing in homage to the goddess Vesta, the spectacular triumphal parade of the Roman legions taking the salute from Nero as it passes the great palace, the exciting chariot chase, the brilliantly staged burning of Rome and the harrowing scenes in the Arena as the lions are released on the hapless hymn-singing Christians. Both Ustinov and Genn were nominated for Acadamy Awards. And of course there is the wonderful Peter Ustinov chewing up every bit of scenery there is as the crazed and loony Nero.

Outstanding is Leo Genn as Petronious - the sardonic and sarcastic confidante of the tyrannical Emperor Nero.

Quo vadis 1951 dvdrip