Location

The 1973 movie takes place in the south-east Italian town of Brundisium. It is to here that the two female slaves who will be the heroines of the film are brought, from Numibia and Brittania respectively, and then purchased in the local slave market by the manager of the town arena. Set in a warm Mediterranean climate (which incidentally allows for a scene in which the new arrivals are stripped and washed in the courtyard of their new abode), the atmosphere is one of heat, dust and sun.

In contrast, the later film is set in Durostrum, modern day Silistra in Bulgaria. It is to Durostrum, the furthest outpost of the empire, that the governor, Timarchus, has been sent, an unpleasant fate and contrary to his expectation of retirement in Rome. In an effort to show the sullen natives what Roman civilisation means, Timarchus has ordered slave girls and gladiators to be brought to the settlement. As the new arrivals journey towards their destination, we are told that the weather grows colder and colder until they arrive at Durostrum, billed as "the worst place in the world". Where the earlier film was set in the warmth of Italy, the later movie takes place in the bleak atmosphere of a Balkan winter, and was filmed on location in Russia. Characters huddle in furs rather than flimsy gauze (although this does not prevent considerable nudity or semi-nudity on the part of the heroines, played by Playboy models Karen McDougal and Lisa Dergan), and skies are grey rather than blue, lending a grimmer feel to the scene.