Produced in Italy from 1908 the sword and sandal (or peplum) films are one of the screen's most neglected and marginalized film genres. The sword and sandal films were present in Italian cinema from the silent era, but attained their greatest popularity in the 1960s when the release of Hercules (1959), starring professional bodybuilder and Mr. Universe Steve Reeves, provoked a global craze for these fantasy-adventures. The exploits of heroic characters like Hercules, Maciste, Samson and Goliath were soon a mainstay of American drive-ins and neighborhood second-run theatres. Until the spaghetti westerns arrived, the peplum genre enjoyed unprecedented popularity for over five years, inspiring many similar Hollywood epics in the process, and, although initially disparaged by critics, enjoy a dedicated following to the present day.