Although more public and critical attention of Italian cinema has been paid to the epics and historical/mythological pepla films, the sword-and-sandal melodramas were not completely devoid of interest. They lacked the budgets and the lightness of their Hollywood brethren, but often their jarring mixture of juvenile plot development and blatant sadism echoed a recurrent theme in their popular culture.
Two such films directed by Mario Soldati and starring Mai Britt, a would be Garbo who never reached her apotheosis, are testament to that : Jolanda a Figlia del Corsaro Nero (Yolanda, Daughter of the Black Pirate) and it's simultaneously shot sequel 1953's The Three Pirates. bloody revenge, flogging, transvestism and torture underline the threadbare plots of the swashbuckling melodrama.